‘s that refers to a person’s home or shop

[Bhikkhu1991a]

Hello,

Is the answer (C) American English, referring to the doctor’s surgery or office?

Here is an excerpt from the TOEIC listening part II, set 14, exercise 1:

1). Where have you been?

(A). I'm going home
(B). I've been fine
(C). I was at the doctor -- CORRECT

http://www.english-test.net/toeic/listening/what_are_you_doing_saturday.html

According to British English, “-‘s” is added to a word and is used to refer to a person’s home or shop--http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/s_4. However, in this particular test, I am wondering why there is no “-’s” added to the “doctor”.

Thank you.

Best wishes,
Bhikkhu1991a.

[Luschen]

Nobody seems to be answering your question. As a native English speaker from the U.S. I can only say that doctor or doctor's would be acceptable to me, although I usually say doctor. I looked up the google ngram, which can be a valuable tool since "what is correct" is usually defined by "what most people write". But unfortunately, it was inconclusive.

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=at+the+doctor%2Cat+the+doctors%2Cat+the+doctor%27s&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

Although this is interesting! I wonder what the difference is?

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=going+to+the+doctor%2Cgoing+to+the+doctors%2C+going+to+the+doctor%27s&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

[Beeesneees]

As a UK based speaker, 'doctor' sounds strange to me. As the dictionary suggests, I would expect the addition of an -s.
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Cheers m' dears!