"It sounds like you have an engineer in the room."

[azurelunatic]

So there's a work thing that my Overlady's had me helping out with, one that involves a conference call with a lot of external people, and Powerpoints. Thursday morning, bright and early, saw me at work, surprisingly perky for the hour. I arrived at the same time as Ponytail Manager, who is just about the first in from my team every day.

So there several of us were in one of the meeting rooms, with the first caller already on the line, and my Overlady catching up and making cheerful small talk with the caller. I'm sitting in place and buzzing, waiting for stuff to happen. My Overlady notices a smudge of something on the edge of her Mac's trackpad, and rubs at it a few times to make it go away.

The caller observes (and we observe on the projector) that the slides have jumped a few things ahead. My Overlady and the caller joke about this. I point out that she'd just been cleaning the trackpad, in a swiping motion, up and down along the right margin of the trackpad. That's the place that on many machines is able to be used as a scrollbar when swiped that way, which well might have caused the observed effects.

"It sounds like you have an engineer in the room," the caller says.

"No, I'm the secretary," I respond, and introduce myself. The conversation flows on, about how folks who aren't necessarily on the deepest technical end of the field can be the ones to understand some system or other inside and out, sometimes because they're the one who uses it, or instructs others in its use, or observes others making all the possible errors. I don't talk much. This is not my show. I notice how close my Overlady's coffee is to empty, and bring water.

I was happy, but a complicated sort of happy, that my first impression on this caller was that I was an engineer.

My actual job title involves "Administrative Assistant". The job title that I most often use in an informal environment is "minion". I'm not dissatisfied with either of those titles, but in the moment, "administrative assistant" was a mouthful, "admin" or "administrator" was ambiguous, and "minion", while completely accurate, was not at the level of professionalism that I wanted to show during this call. So a self-deprecating "secretary" it was.

Why did I feel the need to put myself down in addition to clarifying my role? Why did I feel that "secretary" was unnecessarily demeaning? Do I have somewhat of an inferiority complex because I have more of a technical background than the average person, and I'm working in a mostly non-technical role? I genuinely enjoy my job, and since part of the job description is anything the team decides it can offload onto me, it may well become more technical in the future. But clearly something about being assumed to have a more technical job than I actually have puts me on the defensive.

Comments

[asciident]

More food for thought: why secretary and not assistant?

[pauamma]

Adminion? Speaker-to-computers?

[triadruid]

The Fax Whisperer?

[silveradept]

I have used "minion" at times to describe certain parts of my job that I wish were present, so you could probably get away with it. You could use Fixer-of-Things, too. I think that would get across the right idea.

I think, though, "engineer" calls forth the images of dark lab-dwellers with no social skills and no way of talking other than in highly technical language. Maybe that image is what you were rebelling against?

[azurelunatic]

I'm the oldest child of a programmer, and feel like I am underachieving and a disappointment to my father. All other things being equal, I would like to be an engineer. I don't have the skills to back that up right now.

[azurelunatic]

"Assistant" is nonspecific enough that I don't actually think of it as any kind of description of what I do, even though it's technically correct -- I assist my Overlady and the rest of the team with anything they care to stack on me. At that specific moment, my role was taking detailed notes on the conference call that was about to start. That bit is pretty unambiguously secretarial, probably the most traditionally so out of all of the things I've been asked to do so far.

[azurelunatic]

Mistress of the Motherfucking Scanner, That Fucking Frustrating Lump of Ionizing Lasers

[silveradept]

Ah. And is the definition of "engineer" tied into having the certs, the programming ability, and doing something that would make your father proud? If so, I wonder whether a CS degree would be instrumental.

[azurelunatic]

The training (certified or not), the ability, and the job. He already has a substantial amount of pride in me, and I don't feel quite like I'm living up to his good opinion of me.

[silveradept]

I know that feeling, especially in my own job search, when I was looking. The good thing, not that I would have believed it until I was employed, is that the good opinion really doesn't hinge on the job. The only thing that taught me that is time, perspective, and employment.

[wibbble]

There are ways to resolve those three things, and surprisingly quickly too - I can provide links/info or not, if it'd be annoying. :o)

[jd]

or "I'm Office staff". I've used that one.

[jd]

Ooh man, I am sharing a lot of these feels, in your last paragraph. At least you are not self-deprecating with "the temp" (it's a difficult verbal habit to get out of).

I definitely think you're picking up lots of stuff even from the background - this will be useful later, whether with the same company or another!

[azurelunatic]

Even though I'm a contractor, I'm not being treated like someone who's going to up and vanish in a few months. It makes a massive difference.