I can’t help but be appalled every time I hear a home care or other service agency representative (male or female) refer to “servicing” their clients.  Home care and other agencies serve, they don’t service.

As a farm girl, I’m well aware of the difference. Stallions “service” mares (breed them); they don’t “serve” them.  (The stallions serve their owners, quite happily, by servicing other people’s mares for a fee.)

True–most agents  and representatives have “service areas”–the parameters of the areas they serve. But “service” shouldn’t be used when talking about what these people actually DO! What they do is SERVE the people within their service areas. Make sense?

So PLEASE get this straight, folks. Unless you’re figuratively “screwing” (like the aforementioned stallion ) the people you serve, you’re “serving” them, not “servicing” them!

I will call out anyone I hear using the term “servicing” for “serving” from now on. I simply can’t take it anymore!

Quick way to remember the difference:

You service inanimate things: automobiles, planes, vending machines. And animals “service” (breed) other animals.

If you’re a human who’s doing something for a human being or an animal, you’re serving them –unless what you’re doing is “just a job” to you or an odious chore (like scooping the poop out of a litter pan) and your heart isn’t in it…

Which is why the two terms definitely should not be used interchangeably!