As is the way of things, using "patron" for every day customers didn't make customers more special, it just made the word "patron" less special. That's the way the language works.
But there is a difference between a customer and a patron, and this was brought home to me the other night when I walked up the street to buy some food.
My family used to eat fish and chips quite regularly, but we've scaled back on our take-away consumption, and we now buy it roughly once or twice a year rather than once or twice a month. When I walked up the street to by some fish and chips recently, the shop wasn't there.
In hindsight, I think it hasn't been there for at least a month, because the last time we bought take away we phoned the shop to put in an order, but the number didn't work so I dropped in to a different place on the way home instead. I didn't frequent the shop enough to know exactly when it shut down.
I was a customer of that shop, but I was not a patron.
You see, a customer buys things, but a patron supports. A patron goes out of their way to buy things from that person. The patron of an artist or artisan commissions work from that artist/artisan in order to make sure they can still work, pay bills and live. The patron of a business makes a point of buying things from that business to keep the business viable.
I didn't patronise* that business. I liked having it in my neighbourhood, I wanted it to be there when I needed it, but I didn't make a point of giving them regular custom. That's what they needed from me. It's what they needed from everyone in our neighbourhood.
If every person in the neighbourhood who wanted the shop to survive just made the point of buying one thing from that shop once a week, the shopkeepers would have made a decent living and it would still be there.
The trouble is that we're not really patrons anymore. We're customers - and pretty mercurial (and mercenary) customers at that. We'll give our money to whoever will offer us the cheapest deal - even if, in the long run, it doesn't benefit us, our neighbours or our community at all.
We congratulate ourselves for getting things cheaper elsewhere. Or for keeping our money to ourselves and trying to get something for free.
The real trouble is that the relationship between a patron and their patronee is different to that between a business and their customer. There is a tacit agreement that the patron is willing to pay good money for good work, so the patronee will do their best work for their patron.
Without that relationship - without people agreeing to care about each other, support each other, and provide each other with their best - what do we have left? Businesses trying to get the most money out of customers who want to pay the least money - and nothing good can come of that.
It's worth taking the time to think about what it means to be a patron, and to make a point of patronising the things we want to keep in our communities - the local shops, artists, craftspeople and sporting clubs.
It is, quite literally, for the best.
*From the OED:
a. trans. Of a person, class, organization, etc.: to act as a patron towards, to extend patronage to (a person, cause, etc.); to protect, support, favour, or encourage.
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