Terminology

Could I be wrong? Really? Since the 70's I have begged multifamily to adapt and use more user friendly, politically correct, more 'flattering' terminology. Yet today I read many articles, see news/information regarding our industry, see forms and documents on line, hear team members; still using the old negative words. Examples:
unit, complex, project, tenant, maintenance man, to name a few. Which sounds better to you? A tenant in a unit in a complex, or a resident living in an apartment home in an apartment community? We still say waitress instead of food server, stewardess versus flight attendant, postman instead of letter carrier. Both genders work these jobs yet we use old terminology which is impolite and not correct. Women are part of many service teams...how unfair to say maintenance man rather than the more appropriate 'service or maintenance technician.' Most cities classify the former "garbage pick up" to sanitation engineers.
I am asking for support. Lets step up, into the 21st century, and get rid of old negative terms.

When I see this, it is usually small operator relative to a big operator. Those that operate fourplexes and the like tend to still use landlord/unit/etc, while I really don't see it that much from the large scale operators.

Brent...I think if you look back at blogs on MFI you will see quite a few writers still using old terms. Trust me, I wouldn't have posted this if I wasn't seeing it way too often, all over the internet.

Maybe so - I need to re-look I think!

Anne -

I think it is a reflection of who still dominates the industry. It is still a developer/operator business and I see this sort of language up and down the chain of command. I provide consumer focused service to the industry, and come out of a consumer focused world, where, when I see an over use of industry speak internally, it just leads to a conclusion that a there is a disconnect between provider and customer (who does not speak or respond to industry speak). The more pervasive, the larger the disconnect. It often shows up in more places than just when we speak internally. As hard as this industry has tried to be "resident" focused, we still need to be customer focused - and it will eventually reflect in how we speak to ourselves and each other - and to the customer.