I worked a few retail jobs over the years and something that's stood out to me is how dehumanizing the word 'consumer' is. That's how customers were referred to all the time in company training materials and the phase is used so often when describing customer bases.
And I have to wonder, is that by design? 'Client' and 'customer' are still somewhat alienating terms but they still in some way acknowledge that you're dealing with humans. 'Consumer' makes the people who come to buy stuff from a store sound like walking mouths you're supposed to feed products. That's their only purpose in life, to consume product. And yes, I know the RedLetterTV quote about that.
It makes customers sound like they have no real intellectual depth and only exist to buy as much crap as possible, either when at a store or shopping online. Is it actually supposed to dehumanize customers, make workers think less of customers? I mean, I've seen my fair share of entitled people when I worked retail but most of the customers were pretty well behaved.
Is anyone else thinking this?