I AM A CUSTOMER, NOT A GUEST!

[sidur_mishpacha]

In the past few years, businesses have taken to calling the people who come into their stores “guests.”  Guests and hosts share a reciprocal relationship based on hospitality.  When I invite people to be my guests for dinner, I am either paying for that dinner or cooking it for them.  The quality of the food is nice, but less important than the

Comments

[olaanar]

You can write to business owners and newspapers and whatever else you can think of, but I wouldn't expect to be able to make much of a dent. You could stop patronizing stores that require their employees to use guest instead of customer, but once again, that would have little to no impact. You could tell the employees, and ask to have the message passed up the chain of command, but your single voice is unlikely to change anything. I suppose you could write a petition online and send it to the headquarters of every store that has this practice. But I'm guessing they have marketing people telling them these idiot things, so those are the people you'd really want to get to and good luck finding and convincing them.

[supremum]

as someone who works in customer service and regularly employs the word guest, i'd like to set you in the shoes of the person behind the counter: i have to wear a nametag and a smile. i have to accommodate all needs no matter how ridiculous (even needs that conflict in a minor way with profits--for example, i've had customers brazenly demand free drink cards even after i explain that they haven't bought enough, or they haven't bought the right item or that the customer in front of them follows these rules. if they push back, i have to give them the card.) if i'm going to get through my day with a modicum of self-respect--and a modicum of truth behind my smile--you bet your bottom dollar i'll call you guest. it does equalize the relationship. it even gives me a little power, since i'm being nicer than necessary. there's no rule that says i need to address customers as guests. so if you want people who work in customer service to STOP saying guest, you should drop your expectations for a sunny, excessively accommodating interaction.

[sidur_mishpacha]

Wow! Well, that hit a nerve

[olaanar]

I think the power in calling a customer a guest comes from the notion that if you are inf cat a guest, you have an obligation to respect the host and the host's home (or hosting environment). But this idea is obviously false if the customer is being unruly and making unreasonable demands, and it might even extend over to the social sphere if the idea of being a guest becomes synonymous with being a pain in the ass. And I've also been in the service industry (though it was much shorter term), and there were two things that really pissed me off about it, lack of respect from the management and lack of respect from the customers. And I think the latter is because customers know about the former, and know that the service person is in a powerless position as a result. Management should fix the problem by paying their service people enough that they can hire people they trust to have more freedom to navigate difficult social situations. I don't see that happening and so I doubt the status quo will change any time soon. But for the most