where are you from? where is your boss from? This may be a matter of translation/regional lingo issue.

We are both from Ohio. I personally have never heard of anyone calling janitors/custodians 'floor people', but maybe they are called this in other parts of the United States or elsewhere?

"Is it rude" depends on quite a lot—tone of voice, conventional terminology in your circles for other kinds of service workers, your locale. Outside of any context, I don't understand why you would see a problem with it (native AmE speaker).

Floor staff can be used to refer to customer service/front facing employees who are "on the floor" (among customers in a store, restaurant, as opposed to people working in the backoffice) - not referring to janitors. I don't think it is common to use floor people. It would not be suitable if your boss were to use this in an official setting, e.g. in a meeting or announcement.

Note that, since we care about perceived rudeness and prestige in this question, the term 'janitor' is not as popular anymore and 'custodian' is preferred. Also, you need to explain exactly why you think 'floor people' is rude.

@Mitch, I think it is the same as calling psychologists 'shrinks' or calling personal injury lawyers 'ambulance chasers' or calling rich, married women 'gold diggers'.

@HRIATEXP Have you heard of 'floor people' before? (I haven't (but that doesn't mean it's a common phrase and/or pejorative)). What is the meaning of 'floor people to you that leads to it being derogatory? Or more specifically what is it about 'floor' that is bad. Or is it often used and in a mean way?

@Mitch, all I know is if I was a custodian and someone happened to say to me 'are you and the other floor people paid well?' my response would be 'excuse me, I'm a custodian, not a floor person'.

@HRIATEXP That's not much of an explanation of why you would be insulted by 'floor person'. Since it is not obvious to any body (other than you) why there's a problem, we can only speculate. To help us not say things that are meaningless, you should explain more about what exactly is the problem with 'floor person'. If it is hard to articulate, is it something about 'floor', something about 'person', something about them together? Would 'lightbulb person' be insulting to you? Or 'mop person'? Or 'cleaning person'?

Also, are you imagining this insult for others, or are you yourself a custodian. Answers to these questions will help.

I would interpret "floor people" to mean the people who will come to take care of the floor. We've had a "floor guy" in several times in the past few months to install flooring in our condo, and there's nothing insulting about the term.

I'd be inclined to criticise on the basis of vagueness not perceived insult. We've recently been referring to "carpet people" and "lino guy" because these trades don't have a simple noun like "plumber" or "electrician".

@nigel222 - Ah!! How about "florist"???

as @HotLicks says. "Floor people" would be a sensible shorthand for "flooring contractors" whether installation or cleaning

It could be rude to assume that floor people are janitors/custodians. How do you know that a specialist wasn't being called in to do the work? If your boss put in a ticket for the windows to be cleaned then it would help to avoid conversation ambiguity if he asked whether or not you saw the "window people". Floor and window simply refer to the task being completed at that time.

@MonkeyZeus, our tile floor has been cleaned and waxed multiple times in the past by the same group of janitors/custodians in our building. Now, if my manager had told us last week that he had contacted an outside company to come in and do our floor on Monday morning then I would have no problem with him calling them 'floor people'.

@HRIATEXP Oh okay, well then just take the second part of my comment into consideration; floor simply referred to the task being performed. I sense no derogatory connotation in what your manager said.

It was probably rude to criticise your boss's language rather then giving your boss a simple answer and getting on with what he pays you to do. Unless of course you are your bosses PR Exec or Speech Writer.

Where are the linguists (semanticists)?? floor people, motor people, finance people, door[keeper] people, computer people, window people, etc. ad nauseam. In English, these adjectives are short ways to refer to a particular job or function. I would love to the meet tree people. [caveat: joke, she said with a hammer]

This is about etiquette, not language.

In reality, I think it depends on how much "people" are getting paid; for example, the national average wage/salary: Systems Administrator; the average times 1.5 or greater: "IT guy" or "Hey, you!"... It's counterintuitive.