Both

Yep. Employees and customers. Neglect any of them bad things happen.

Depending on your business you may have stable customers who just keep going. You can’t neglect these forever, but compared to employees it may be of lesser priority short-term.

If you neglect employees on the other hand, even short-term, bad things will happen short-term or long term. Employees remember when they were neglected and loyalties are hard to build.

Right. And the the my job/work/boss sucks trope is so relatable because?

There are many reasons people stay in a particular job, good and bad, but those same reasons allow for a lot of "employees neglect".

You have to neglect a lot of employees to an extreme level, for a long time, for it to actually make a significant difference. Mostly, you'll loose a few staff, who'll be replaced by new, keen, eager to please/succeed staff who's enthusiasm effectively mitigates poor management, and who's "tolerance for sh.tty management" counters have been reset to 0.

You have three pillars: customers, employees, and shareholders. Neglect any and bad things happen.

Yes, but you do that through product + service. Customers don’t really care about your metrics.

Probably the opposing vew to this is that if you keep your employees happy first, then they will be happy and keep your customers happy. If you have unhappy employees, they might not give a shit about customers and piss the customers off.

We've all been to those places where the employees don't give a fuck about customers, and basically tell you with their body language and tone of voice to fuck off.

Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7lGqmZprx0