In the IT world, is the term "User" offensive?

[Dartgod]

So I work in IT and for as long as I've done so (20+ years), our end users are usually simply referred to as "users". This came out yesterday from our infrastructure director:

"I want to challenge all of you to stop using the word "user" when referring to employee-owners that use the systems and services we provide. You can imagine how offensive this term is to someone who is not an IT employee. Please stop using this word in presentations, training sessions, support conversations, or when simply writing a note in an incident."

When the hell did this happen? Have any of you other IT workers seen this? Hell most of the Powershell cmdlets I use daily are baser on "user"; Get-AdUser, Set-CsUser, etc...

I'm really having a hard time understanding how and when this became an offensive term?