International audience This article deals with the suffering of the customer in the service relationship, in connection with a recognition deficit felt by this one. It is part of a theoretical frameworks in management services, which conceives the customer as an employee who take an active role in the production of the service. Service activities have indeed particularity to be a result of a co-production between the client himself and the organization. Customer satisfaction with regard to the consummate service will then depend on the organization's ability to induce the customer to reveal its expectations and to mobilize its resources (knowledge and skills) and to make an effort to support all or part of the activities to the service'sproduction.This article try to know if these three aspects of the co-production of the service (customer's needs, implemented skills and realization of efforts) are always sufficiently recognized by the provider company.The observed lack of recognition is both existential (a client that we forget to greet, a customer who waiting a long time without explanation or apology, ...) related to identity (when his name is deformed several times,) or related to the absence of stimulation. A literature review managerial on the service experience, crossing psychology and Human Resources Management on the recognition, will serve as the conceptual framework for this research. Furthermore, the exploitation of story telling a disturbed state of service (in a spa) in connection with a lack of recognition, completes this exploratory study.