slippery customer

slippery customer

1. A devious, scheming, and untrustworthy person, group, organization, etc. You're working for Brett Thompson? Watch out—that guy's a slippery customer. Companies like this are slippery customers, coming up with all sorts of elaborate means of getting around regulations.
2. Someone who is difficult or impossible to apprehend or pin down due to their cunning. The notorious criminal has proven to be a slippery customer for police, eluding capture once again.
3. Someone or something that is difficult or tricky to determine or define with certainty. Modern art is often a slippery customer because it defies the boundaries of what a lot of people consider "real" art. What some may consider utterly brilliant others will stare at and wonder why a seven-year-old couldn't have done better.
See also: customer, slippery
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

slippery customer

 
1. Fig. a clever and deceitful customer. Watch out for that guy with the big padded coat. He may snatch something. He's a real slippery customer.
2. Fig. a slippery creature. This little fish is a slippery customer. Get me something to scoop it back into its bowl.
See also: customer, slippery
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • be as slippery as an eel
  • eel
  • slippery
  • slippery as an eel
  • (as) slippery as an eel
  • scheme for
  • scheme for (something)
  • take up with (one)
  • cluck
  • pull a fast one, to
References in classic literature
Certainly, had I been one of the Barons, at the time, I should have strongly urged upon my comrades the advisability of our getting such a slippery customer as King John on to the island, where there was less chance of surprises and tricks.
Community cops dealt with a slippery customer at the Kibble Education and Care Centre fun day.
This is not the first time Cambridgeshire Constabulary has dealt with a slippery customer.
Granted our enemy is a slippery customer, it is still no excuse to come down from a morally high pedestal.
Slippery customer A MAN who kept a 4ft crocodile and 23 snakes in "appalling conditions" in a bedroom has been jailed for 26 weeks.
I'm still not sure if they felt I wasn't the challenge they were really looking for between the ages of 7 and 12, or if I was indeed a bit of a slippery customer, secretly carried chilli powder in my pockets to defend myself.
John Stone was pulling into his house on Brent Close, Northern Moor, Wythenshawe, with his wife, Barbara, when they caught sight of the slippery customer.
A BREWERY technician came face to face with a slippery customer when he went to fix a beer problem at an Atherstone pub.
It plays the victim card at every opportunity and is a slippery customer, ducking and diving as it negotiates a world that plays by Big Boys Rules.
How he got there was anyone's guess but as the officers later admitted they knew he was one slippery customer.
Rippy has been in the crosshairs of Georgia Bureau investigator Will Trent for quite some time, but the basketballer has proved to be a slippery customer. And when Will's new sweetie Sara Linton, the forensic investigator assigned to the case, discovers that the bulk of the blood found at the crime scene does not belong to the victim, it quickly becomes apparent that there is an altogether more compelling mystery afoot, a mystery in which Rippy seems to be a key figure.
HE may have been on the losing side but Fish is a slippery customer who makes things tick.
SLIPPERY CUSTOMER Chic with the California king snake he found at ScotBet in Wishaw
A SLIPPERY customer had mechanics shaking with fear.
"Charlie is a slippery customer. He comes in at the beginning and you're not quite sure about him," says Goode.