The problem with the "I pay your wages, therefore..." argument is that it can used used to justify almost any action or position taken up by anybody. It is an imprecise area weapon that inflicts casualties on everybody within the blast radius, including the user.
Factually, it is accurate - passengers do of course pay the wages of airline personnel (together with freight shippers) however from that point on, things begin to slip.
Modern aviation is a mass transit industry. Intelligent human beings do not like to be treated as part of a mass: Good airlines understand this and put policies and procedures in place to try and recognise this fact, and to treat customers (as far as possible within the cost model) as individuals. Even with the greatest efforts, it is inevitable that some areas of the experience will fail to meet customer expectations or desires. When this happens, the customer will either decide to roll with the punches, or will complain and attempt to rectify the problem, or will move elsewhere. This is why good airlines will tend to treat complaint as an opportunity to improve the customer experience.
Aviation also employs humans: By definition, there will therefore be infinite shades of ability, empathy, intelligence and talent. This will, in turn, constantly shade the customer experience. There are crew that I have worked with who make me wince every time they speak to somebody, and also some who have a natural ability that I envy. This will surely be true of any industry.
Now we know this, shouldn't we just step back and get some perspective before posting further on this thread?