The Secretarial Pool

Midway through my 30 year career in higher education, I asked a colleague of mine his strategy on providing support for an unplanned hire. We’ll just pull someone from the secretarial pool. I was aghast. The term, secretarial pool, was right out of the Mad Men era, where women were (and still are) relegated to taking notes, answering emails, making calls, and scheduling. Not only was his language archaic and offensive, it conveyed the sentiment that those in the “secretarial pool” had no autonomy. Apparently, it did not matter if the person in the pool would want to change positions or not; it was simply a decision he would make for them. 

The work of secretaries or, the contemporary term, administrative assistants, is crucial for a smooth running organization. Someone has to deal with calendaring, email, phone calls, files, and other duties “as assigned.” What irks me is that the majority of admin assistants are still women. I never once saw a man in the admin assistant role at my previous place of work. This is because the work of the assistant is seen to be women’s work. Since the Baby Boomer generation, the role of secretary was an entry point into the workforce for women, and many stayed there for the entirety of their career. The options for work outside of home were few. As more women joined the workforce, having them  in the support role allowed the men to feel less threatened. If the woman’s role was to brew the coffee and take notes, then he didn’t have to worry about her sharing any insights that may rival, compete, or simply complement his ideas. 

My first job after receiving my undergraduate degree in the early 90s was as an assistant to the executive director of a Girl Scout council. My AB in English provided an array of skills, including writing, researching, and communication. As a Gen X who entered the tech world with DOS and WordPerfect, I designed a monthly newsletter on a green screen and later, with the advent of MS Office, learned how to make a database for gift entries. I grew bored after a few years, not to mention tired of walking into my office to find yellow sticky-notes slapped on my monitor and chair. My boss had a lot of ideas, but I did, too. I had outgrown the assistant role and was ready for more responsibility.

I took the skills I learned and began working at a small college. I worked up the ranks from road runner (admissions recruiter) to eventually being the VP for Planning & Research and teaching creative writing and composition part-time. That sentence does not reveal the long and circuitous route that it took for me to earn the title of VP. Of all the presidents I served with, only one saw my abilities and let me run with them. Others made sure to keep me in my place in the patriarchal sense. These presidents were obviously sexist, and were so deeply tied to their prejudice that they could not understand that their sexism was 1) dumb; 2) shortchanged the success of not only them, but the organization as a whole. You see, there are very few leaders who can allow others to shine. Those who do are rare, and are almost always successful in retaining talent while moving an institution forward. The usual fodder is a leader who gets scared when someone lower on the totem pole performs extra well, or challenges their ideas. They don’t want that. That’s why we see mediocre to inept employees continue to remain on the payroll, sometimes even being promoted, while the talent is ostracized and/or squeezed out. Not only do the mediocre employees remain, they tank the morale of their colleagues.

Midway through my career at the college, I was on the president’s cabinet as the director of institutional research and planning. A new president arrived (one of many). I was pleased to learn that he wanted to meet individually with each member of the cabinet. I envisioned discussing the findings of the latest retention study and campus climate survey. I had ideas to share. I was excited.

When I entered his office, he did not offer a chair. Instead, he glanced at me briefly and pointed to a collection of books on the bottom row of his bookshelf. Those books, he said, should probably be in your office. He was pointing to roughly 15 annual publications of the Association of Institutional Research. He wanted me, at that moment, to remove the books. That was the extent of our meeting.

Instead of seeing me as a colleague with viable skills to offer, this president wanted me to immediately understand my place. When it came time for the annual retreat he made a point to exclude me from the entirety of the planning weekend. I was invited to attend only the Friday night session. He smiled when he said I could serve as a “scribis,” using an antiquated Latin word for scribe (attempting to sound smart). I was demoralized and full of rage. I begrudgingly attended that Friday night to take notes, listening in as the team I was a member of shared big ideas for the future, none of which I apparently had a say in anymore. I had been relegated to the secretarial role, regardless of my experience, skills, and title. 

While the assistant role is ideal for identifying talented employees who wish to grow professionally and investing in them, it is also used as a tool to passive aggressively demote an individual, as was the case for me. While that particular president only lasted two years, I encountered another one of the same ilk later in my career. I was not going to play that game, so I left. Before doing so, I had a colleague tell me that I needed to “wow” the president with my skills and abilities, that maybe then he would understand my worth. Nevermind that I had been at the college for three decades with a stellar professional record. I simply stared at her. As opposed to being an advocate, she chose to join in with the boys. Her chosen role was to fawn and feign the need for help with her male supervisors. By playing into their shallow egos, she was kept safely in her role due to her allegiance to mediocrity and the status quo. She provided foundation for a broken system at the expense of another.

Working for an organization implies a contract between two entities. When that contract is broken, whether in a positive or negative way, a relationship ends. There is grief. Rage. Second-guessing. If one is lucky, mostly good memories of having made a positive contribution, with sadness that it’s over. Usually, it is a mix of emotions. For me it was initially a lot of hurt and anger that I was at a loss to shed without burning bridges or acting out. I turned to my creative endeavors with new energy, and one of the outputs was the poem below, which allowed me to vent. Hopefully it will provide some cathartic relief for others out there who have also been punished in some fashion by the workplace, be it through sexism, discrimination, or, ironically, for being a great employee.

Secretarial Pool

You can’t swim in it.

No water, thick with thighs, 

breasts & unruly pubes.

Hourly, boys push girls

under. Some drown. Another 

always pops up. The lifeguard 

stand remains unoccupied, 

year-round.

A pool with no children. Yet, 

the women raise & discipline

during non-secretarial 

hours. Expected also to cook, 

clean, suck cock.

The oiled men laugh. They say

the pool is a thing of the past

as they hand out half-day vacations, 

gift cards to Chick Fil A.

Look, over there. A head, bobbing.

No water, no lifeguards. 

Just bodies with breasts, thighs 

& unruly pubes, dying

to get out.