Employer employs employee. Subject verb object, baby.
Now, I have been on New York City buses often enough to grant that there are times that I end up not only standing but standing specifically where the bus driver stands me {“you there, there’s room behind you to your left, c’mon move to the back of the bus”}, so I am provisionally and grudgingly willing to tolerate “standee”.
But “attendee”, for the luvva Mike? No way. If you went to it, whether it be concert, fundraiser, or world cup finals match, you’re an attender. Or, if you prefer, guest, customer, member of audience, spectator, fan, or afficionado. But not attendee. If you wish to be an attendee, you’ve got to get them to come to you and attend you as an event.
It is not, of course, in any way true that the crux of the syntactical problem is people desiring to be attendees, or to be designated as such. It doesn’t. Attention-whores though some of us may be, most folks file into their seats or boxes and attend the main event with the full expectation of being entertained as audience. No, it’s the scribes, jotting down their notes and expanding them to column-length with an annoyingly ovine tendency to misuse the same terms and phrases misused by their colleagues in the columns of previous weeks.
OK, I’m done here. Thank you for attending. Hey, whaddaya know, I’m an attendee!