A guest by any other name...

It seems that sales clerks in stores are now referring to customers as 'guests'. It happened twice on the same day recently and left me far from amused. The first time I thought it may have been a simple and honest oversight by the staff member. However, only an hour after the first occurrence I was in another store when, after standing in line waiting to pay for a pair of jeans, I heard the line attendant state, 'Would our next guest step down.' 'Our guest!' Really? Now I know it's not the fault of the poor floor workers, instead it's the ill-designed phrase conjured by some half-wit in the marketing dept. paid too much and sitting too far from reality...Yet naturally, I brought the matter up when I approached the counter, saying that, I would in fact like to revoke my guest status and re-install instead, myself as a customer. A customer who expects nothing more then decent service as opposed to a guest who feels truly humbled and in fact honoured that 'said store' might consider him worthy of being a guest in this holy-of-holiest shrine to the denim jean. The bemused clerk corrected me, saying that in fact I was a guest. Withholding any payment I informed the clerk that I had not received an invitation to appear at said store, there was no rsvp to attend to and in fact referring to your customers as 'your guest' changes the dynamic in the customer/clerk relationship. Indeed, should this outlandish behaviour continue I will take my 'guest' money to an alternate store where I am known simply as a customer. By this time the shift manager had approached the scene and interjected, saying, 'Don't you want to be our guest?' 'Well, if you refer to me as a guest, then I suppose I could consider these jeans a gift?' The shift manager looked around for someone higher up in the food chain. 'And,' I continued, 'if that's the case don't you think it's a bit much to ask your guests to pay for their gifts?' Muttering almost inaudibly they agreed to refer to me as a customer...yet no doubt referred to me by a few different names after I'd left their temple of cloth.