Please utilize all doors

This evening, while boarding the Metro, the conducter announced "Please utilize all doors of the train. Please utilize all doors of the train."

I thought this was pretty funny, because it was right out of Paul Fussell's book on Class. He says the middle class like to use big words because small words just don't seem important enough. So the conductor misuses the word "utilize" where he meant "use."

But a train conductor job is surely high prole at best, not middle class. Is the conductor trying to affect the manners of the class above him? Or has living in Washington, DC, where our government goes out of its way to use big words, acronyms and the passive voice, infused the conductor with the need to mimic governmentese?

Comments

[KipEsquire]

They're probably just told to say that as part of their training.

[Michael A. Clem]

You know, I'm beginning to think that you're obsessed with class and status. ;-)
But seriously, there could be any number of reasons why he used the word "utilize". Sherlock Holmes said that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever's left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. But first you have to eliminate everything else.