crontab -l return 1 in absence of /var/spool/cron/crontabs/user

i guess it is rather a feature than a bug
but it doesnot feel right
$ crontab -l
got "no crontab for $user" from stderr and a return code of 1
if the file /var/spool/cron/crontabs/$user does not exist
but if the file exists and is empty code 0 is returned
by default that file does not exist so i think the error code doesn't make sense
if "1" means error, the system should have that file created while creating user
if "1" means not found, 1 should be returned when no jobs are found in the file