There was a day when the title “secretary” was not followed by a phrase such as “of state” or “of defense.” No. These secretaries had more important jobs. They were the glue that held the known world of words together. They were the duct tape of commerce and government. Without them, no one would have had a clue of what anyone else was saying because they couldn’t read each others hand writing and keeping track of business lunches, travel plans (and the expense accounts that went with them), would have been all but chaos.
When I began my career in advertising, we had secretaries. As a junior, you had the services of a department secretary and as you advanced, you moved higher and higher, closer and closer to the ultimate sign of success: not a Porche or a house in the Hamptons but your own personal secretary. Most often, secretaries were female but not always and most often they were attractive although not always.
Raise your hand if you have never slept with your secretary.
Today, most people sleep with what has replaced their secretary: a computerized telephone. Today, not only is no one answering your phone for you, you are expected to use your phone to type modern day memos (a.k.a. emails) in volumes never before thought possible at speeds never before thought reasonable.
Typing was one of the first things to go out the window with the demise of secretaries. I am a ‘creative’ in advertising and before my business card had lofty titles like ‘President’ or ‘Executive Vice President, Creative Director’, my business cards (now replaced by a Linkedin profile) read ‘copywriter’. Although my job titles changed, my primary function did not.
With the introduction of the desktop computer (which, in some ways, I pioneered, being one of the first to bring a MacIntosh 512K Enhanced to the office), typing was one of the first duties to migrate from the secretary into the hands of the ‘executive’.
Let’s run the math on that one. Depending on the agency where I worked, I could have been billed out at anywhere between a ‘whole-bunch-an-hour’ to ‘you-wouldn’t-believe-how-much-an-hour’, depending on how much ink I had on my business card (see above). Secretaries were an absorbed cost with their pink-collar wages added to administration costs, like pencils, notepads and ‘while-you-were-out’ slips stuffed into your pigeon hole telling you who had called and leaving their message and number, should you choose to call back.
Throughout my education, I never took typing. Today that course is marketed as ‘keyboard skills.” Or something. Nevertheless, the economic fact remains I do not type anywhere near 60 words a minute but am billed out at a lot more than someone who could. There were times when I found myself having to type the legal copy (the illegible ‘mice type’ at the bottom of an ad that basically justifies the phrase, ‘I lied’). If you think of the volumes of ‘mice type’ you encounter every day, you can only imagine the cumulative impact this has on our economy. The ‘economic crisis’ of 2008? One could argue that the volume of ‘mice type’ was to blame. Misplaced manpower. Excuse me: person power. Other, more economically sophisticated than I, would argue that the ‘mice type’, (particularly that found in financial prospectuses), should have been larger.
I miss secretaries. One of my former secretaries is now a successful psychotherapist (although I refuse to admit I inspired her) and another is an extremely successful, exceptionally talented, television writer in Hollywood who was terrified when her daughter, (her first child), happened to enter this world on the same day as I, December 29th. I consider this daughter a kindred spirit by chance and a fellow bearer of the dark torch by choice.
Secretaries, executive assistants, administrative assistants; call them what you will: they were (and in some high-level places still are) oddly paired, hap-chance soul mates, keepers of secrets, intimate confidants and often a shoulder to lean on when no one could know you needed a shoulder to lean on.
And after all that, secretaries were people who could type 60 words a minute. They were probably the most under-valued professionals in the business world. So let’s give pause to remember the secretaries in our past. God bless them where ever they are.
Three Years on Mars 