The trouble with titles. A personal history.

Kirk Ericson | Apr 21, 20220

I worked for a state representative at the Capitol in Olympia for three months during the 1988 legislative session.

I sat at a desk, behind a plastic rectangle that displayed my name. I smiled when strangers came to the desk, and when those strangers left, I’d say, “Nice to meet you.” I drank coffee from my coffee cup. I wrote and typed letters, answered the phone, made copies, kept my desk orderly, minded the representative’s daily schedule and directed visitors to the bathroom.

I did not like that job, despite having a plastic name display, but I did meet Mrs. Ericson there. It’s the only job I’ve had where I had to wear a tie, a suit jacket, good shoes and socks. I was presentable and eligible.

The first week on the job, the other people who did what I did gathered with our main boss to discuss what title we should give ourselves. About 50 of us gathered in a room in the House Office Building. My coworkers — excuse me, my colleagues — suggested titles that included legislative aide, legislative assistant, political aide, legislative liaison and administrative assistant. Engaged discussion followed each suggestion. The mood of the room was direct, focused and on task. After a few minutes, I had a suggestion.

“Why don’t we call ourselves secretaries?” I asked from my seat in the back row of the room.

Some people in the room swiveled around to see who spoke. I waved. I didn’t know anyone there and didn’t have plans to stay in the job, so I could afford to slip a stick in the spokes — I knew the title of secretary was the one title that those people wanted to bury 8 feet deep and 2 feet wide.

“We’re not secretaries,” one person said. “We do a lot more than that.”

“We type letters, we answer the phone, we keep track of schedules. Isn’t that what secretaries do?” I asked.

The meeting rolled over my suggestion like it never existed. I think the vote was for administrative assistant, but I can’t remember. I, however, kept referring to myself as a secretary. I was OK being a secretary.

I understood the word “secretary” had a bad connotation, mainly because of the behavior of male bosses. It summoned an image of a woman in a skirt getting coffee for a boss who would chase her around the desk. It’s the way of job titles. Negative associations get grafted onto titles, but instead of changing the thing itself, we change the word that describes the thing and hope everything gets better.

And things did get better for us secretaries. We got a new name.

I see this title circus a lot in phone work. I called Comcast last week about something that was not good, and I got someone who introduced himself as a customer satisfaction representative ambassador. It seems they have a new title each time I call. They probably don’t get raises every time their job title changes. Maybe management thinks they should be happy enough that they’re now ambassadors.

I’m a copy editor and a columnist. Those titles have been around for generations, even though what we do has changed a lot over the past 100 years. Changing titles would not make me feel more important. Or less important. The titles in newspaper newsrooms have mostly remained what they’ve always been: Reporter, editor, photographer, columnist. I like that.

As the father in “Fiddler on the Roof” sang: “Tradition!”

■ Contact Kirk Ericson at [email protected]