In a lot of ways, the world was a simpler place in days gone by.
If you laid bricks, you were a bricklayer. If you taught children, you were a teacher. If you sold yourself to desperate strangers, you were a lawyer.
Your profession, your job description, what you did to kill time before the welcome release of death, was simple.
When you went to a dive bar to pick up desperate strangers and they asked you what you did for a living, the explanation didn’t require a degree from NASA and a carefully illustrated pie chart. The exchange was simple, quickly understood and easily digested.
And then came the secretaries with all their high-flying ideals, yet lack of actual ambition.
And…they…ruined…everything – those ‘personal assistants’. And then ‘personal assistant to the chief executive officer’. And, not to be outdone, ‘personal assistant to the chief executive officer and chief snipper of his favourite dog’s dingleberries’.
Now the world was faced with a conundrum.
Accept the fact that, no matter what name you give it, the job remains the same and the exact same stigma that was attached to the word ‘secretary’ in 1994, will eventually waft across and cling to the title ‘personal assistant’ when all the excrement has settled.
Or – and this, my friends, is why the world is in such disarray – embrace this absolutely nonsense notion that renaming something somehow imbues it with a level of sophistication historically reserved for sultans and the like.
And the corporates stepped in with all their fart-filled egos, happy to boost their perceived image and – undoubtedly – their bottom line as well.
So where we had ‘boss’, we now have ‘CEO’, ‘COO’, ‘CTO’, ‘UFO’ and all manner of utterly inexplicable acronyms that not even the holder could communicate without sounding like a loon.
But the worst of it is the way they throw these unfounded acronyms around with the rest of the world as if we all understand what in the actual hell they mean.
Well nothing. Just that the title owner is a pompous tit really.
And just as the egos had seemingly reached their zenith, the millennials arrived with their unkempt hair, androgynous clothing and lackadaisical work ethic. And that damned undefinable allure.
But now we were forced to ask ourselves: ‘What fresh hell is this?’Sure, I get it. Technology, internet, mouse pads… it all meant a whole host of new professions that needed to be defined.
But did they have to be so excruciatingly annoying about it?
Data Storyteller. There is no story about data that is going to keep me from slapping you.
Customer Relationship Advocate. Well there’s no way you need a law degree for that.
Happiness Manager. Read: ‘Dispenser of weed’.
Legal Ninja. I suppose lawyers need all the help they can get, so I’ll give them that one.
And then they just add ‘specialist’ to anything despite absolutely no external determinant that requires passing any form of standardised test.
Unless it’s a free online course – with an optional multiple guess at the end. ‘Tetris Playing Specialist and Personal Assistant to the Happiness Manager’.
There is one title I’ll get on board with though…Rock Star Copywriter. It speaks to my inner millennial, if not my payslip.
