I accidentally in your base

admin girl

Gah. *twitch* Do you ever refer to your male colleagues as boys?

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Sometimes but not as frequently - which is about the same as for non-work purposes.

Ideally the south needs the word 'lass', and for 'lad' to be less lager-lout related.

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If a male was a doing that job I would definitely call him the admin boy. Does that help? It's something to do with the sound of the job titles/descriptions. Developer/coder/geek are nouns, 'admin' on its own doesn't seem to sound right.

Hrm. A manager, an admin and a programmer walk into a bar...

Nope, doesn't work. Well, the manager doesn't anyway :)

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Administrator would work, but clearly has too many syllables for any sane person to use in real life ;)

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kaz-pixie.livejournal.com

There's a difference anyway. The admin boy/girl (although how many admin boys do you see, they're PAs or do data entry?!) does the filing and typing, generally if you're an admin person you're an assistant. An administrator tends to be more important and have some degree of autonomy (do I use an A4 or A5 envelope?)

This is made up and silly, but it is something I have noticed in various jobs, here I am called the administrator/temp desk coordinator/"ASK KAREN" in other places I've been one of the admin team.

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I'm not sure it is that different. My job title is PA to the CTO, and I have autonomy to the extent that I'm currently managing a project with a budget in the hundreds of thousands, but I still get referred to as "admin girl"? (Admittedly usually only once by any given person...)

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kaz-pixie.livejournal.com

I think it's just the combination of the words that makes me feel like I am utterly worthless to an organisation. When I was about 16 I worked as a part time "admin girl" and it was literally just answering the phone, data entry and filing. Now my job includes so many different things, a large degree of autonomy and responsibility, and leaves me accountable for certain errors I just find the term derogatory. "The admin girl can sort that out" just implies the job is too lowly for anyone else. I object to it.

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If a male was a doing that job I would definitely call him the admin boy. Does that help?

It does, although I suspect I'd find it just as irritating in his place as I do when people at work refer to me as "girl". Administrator is what I'd use (and it only has one more syllable than developer ;p).

Although this might not be the case for you, it's certainly true that low-status jobs are more likely to be referred to as -boy or -girl, and women tend to have more low status jobs, and the infantalization reinforces the culture in which this happens, hence the making me twitch...

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I'm not sure it's entirely a low-status jobs thing in this case? Denny, you always used to refer to the "sales girl" as well, and in my experience sales isn't seen as being in the same cultural bracket as admin (unless it's telesales, obv). When you hire a new salesperson I shall be watching your nouns with great interest :)

...

(You know where that came from? "with great interest" reminded me of the phrase "for great justice" and OMG I AM DOOMED.)

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Yeah, but I fancied her, so clearly she was a girl ;)

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This had occurred to me :)

You do refer to people as 'girls' and 'boys' more than most people, I think. You always talk about 'boys' when referring to males in a sexual context as well... Do you fancy your current administrator?

(I totally need a 'bisexual' icon.)

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She was doing telesales, btw.

The news sales guys (tell me the female equivalent of 'guy' (or 'bloke') and I'll feel more guilty about that word choice) we've been interviewing all look scarily slick, and may spend more time out and about harassing dealers in person.

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I sort of think that these days the female equivalent of guy is guy, but I suspect that pisses some people off as well... Oh, what a minefield.

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Really? Don't think I've ever heard guy used to describe a female singly, although they do sometimes get lumped into 'you guys' (and in my experience, invariably complain about it, although usually in a 'having a laugh' kind of way).

I realised earlier that 'dude' can be and is used cross-gender, in its application as a pre-technical term (i.e. if you say 'dude' instead of 'oi', then the following question is likely to involve computers and probably programming) :)

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olithered.livejournal.com

Sales chick?

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reminded me of the phrase

I hate you.

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You do realise how '...' was being used in this context, yes? :)

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I do now. I thought it was an actual proper ellipse. :)

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You mean ellipsis? :)

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Uh. Yes. Thank you.

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I suspect it probably is an unreasonable status perception on my part, but I'm fairly sure it's not a gendered one in my case.

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<denny> Why are there no words for females that only have one syllable? Except 'girl', which pisses off feminists.
<tar0r> 'bitch'
<footooratika> or wench.
<footooratika> or bint

(both of the respondents being female)

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it only has one more syllable than developer

Hence the prevalence of "coder" or "dev". :)

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easternpromise.livejournal.com

Or "monkey". >:)

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Ook.

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tephramancy.livejournal.com

Actually, I do. Pretty much exclusively :)

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kelemvor.livejournal.com

Good luck with the running-the-company! Just remember not to fire too many people...

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