Some years ago, I stood on Fifth Avenue waiting for the next convoy of buses to arrive. (FYI, Car People: New York City buses travel in packs, apparently under orders to stay within sight of another bus driver at all times.) I remarked to a fellow potential passenger that I was going to be late. “I can’t be late,” he replied. “I’m a physician. I’m ‘delayed,’ not ‘late.’” So I get why doctors have patients, because patience is what you need when your healer is attending to someone else’s life-threatening condition or waiting for public transportation.

My lawyer and accountant have clients, but the stores in my neighborhood have customers — or at least they used to (more about that later). Why the difference? The official definition of a client is someone who receives services. A customer, according to several dictionaries I consulted, pays for goods or services. The term client seems to elevate the service provider to the status of a professional, someone who’s chosen a career path and studied mightily for the qualifications to practice it. (Why practice, by the way? Haven’t they perfected their skills by now?)

I realize, of course, that value judgments are all over these words. Plenty of people who have spent years learning a craft or trade and decades pursuing it have customers. When I drop off clothes at the dry cleaners, for example, the hardworking people who run the place manage to remove all sorts of stains and spruce up my garments, all the while smiling at their customers and staying on the right side of the many laws that regulate their business.

Now “trending,” as they say on social media, is guest. Hotels used to have customers or clients, but now they have guests. Okay, you stay overnight somewhere, they take care of you and at least in theory try to make you comfortable. Those activities do fall into the category of hospitality, so I can live with guest when it comes to lodging. But employees at my favorite frozen yogurt place now bid the “following guest” to step up to the little scale to weigh each portion of empty but oh-so-tasty calories and compute the price. How am I a guest when I have to pay for this product? Should I extrapolate and charge for the asparagus at my next dinner party? I imagine the corporate expert who wrote the script for this frozen-yogurt franchise. “Let’s create a cozy atmosphere! Everyone will feel like a guest in our home and eat more yogurt,” they say in my fantasy, although how anyone could live with three flat-screen televisions displaying tween sit-coms and a color scheme that could most mercifully be called garish is beyond my comprehension.

My recommendation: Make everyone (patient, client, guest) a customer. Because, as we all know, the customer is always right.