Servicing the Client
I’m a farm boy. I know what servicing means. It’s what bulls do to cows, to the profit of the bull’s owner and the pleasure of the bovine couple.
Servicing is also what technicians do to equipment. They have less fun than the bull, but their work is just as necessary.
Servicing is not what you should do to clients, in either sense set out in the foregoing examples. You serve clients, you don’t service them. If you do, you risk professional discipline.
“Servicing” is an example of the verbification of nouns, an ongoing dynamic of a language in evolution. As a purist, I don’t like it, but we can no more stop linguistic trends than King Canute (https://storiesforpreaching.com/king-canute/) could stop the tides.
Of course, it goes the other way, too: we also press verbs into service as nouns. “I have a good solve for that” or “What’s the ask?”
English is a resilient, flexible language with a lot less rules than most other languages, but it still has rules. It’s OK to break the rules for emphasis, but for heaven’s sake, we need to know the rules first. Verbs are actions and nouns are names.
I think we need to slow this down a little! Agreed? So, let’s action that!
Free download: Fourteen Life Saving Tips for the Terrified Public Speaker (http://www.purposeful.ca/free.html)
Rising Stars
I was very flattered to be selected as Ottawa’s “Rising Star” contestant to the 2017 Convention of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers. Speaking to an audience of professional public speakers is naturally daunting, but no buns were thrown and the audience and judges were kind.
Give a Goat! Seriously!
Not sure what gift to give “someone who has everything” or perhaps someone who doesn’t need one more pair of socks? How about the gift of a gift of a goat to a needy family or village? (https://donate.worldvision.org/give/goats)