(Edited to add context)

Context: The speakers work for a railroad. An important customer has just fired them in favor of a competitor, the Phoenix-Durango Railroad.

Jim Taggart [Company president, antagonist]: "What does he expect? That we drop all our other shippers, sacrifice the interests of the whole country and give him all our trains?"

Eddie Willers [Junior exec, sympathetic character]: "Why, no. He doesn't expect anything. He just deals with the Phoenix-Durango."

• Atlas Shrugged

It gets at the idea talked about here sometimes that reality has no obligation to give you tests you can pass; sometimes you just fail and that's it.

ETA: On reflection, what I think the quote really gets at is that Taggart cannot understand that his terminal goals may be only someone else's instrumental goals, that other people are not extensions of himself. Taggart's terminal goal is to run as many trains as possible. If he can help a customer, then the customer is happy to have Taggart carry his freight, and Taggart's terminal goal aligns with the customer's instrumental goal. But the customer's terminal goal is not to give Taggart Inc. business, but just to get his freight shipped. If the customer can find a better alternative, like competing railroad, he'll switch. For Taggart, of course, that is not a better alternative at all, hence his anger and confusion.

(Apologies for lack of context initially).