The Girl, ET and Cabbages

When I left college over a decade ago it was my dream to become a journalist. To write pieces of great intellectual merit, to call to the attention of the masses the truth and expose the hoaxes and frauds of the world, to be a voice for the underdog and other such lofty aims. To achieve my ambition I joined an English daily eveninger. They gave me a rickety chair and a desk which had a pigeon’s nest in it. I sat in a dingy little room with a ceiling fan which did about one revolution every other minute with sounds of much protest.

The editor sat in her air conditioned room with the door closed, didn’t know my name and called me ‘the girl”. And the first assignment she gave “the girl’ was that I was asked to put together the horoscope column for the paper. I had visions of research into the zodiac signs and reading up on Linda Goodman and what not. The matter turned out to be much simpler. I had to do this task together with Chacha, who was this lively old peon who had been there since the dawn of time. Chacha told me not to worry that he had it under control. He showed me an old tin jar which contained horoscopes predictions pre-written and pre-cut into exact squares to fit in the space under each zodiac heading in the space allotted. All I had to do is take out any old square and paste under any old zodiac sign and presto – horoscopes for the day.

Needless to say that ‘the girl’ lasted all of five days in that office. I applied to a small foreign bank and they took me on. And from ‘the girl’ I immediately got promoted to “ET” – Executive Trainee. Small step for (wo)man but a great leap for the ego!

There were a bunch of us ET’s. The job title acronym brought a smile to everyone and was the cause of many jokes. We were supposed to be weird and clueless, much like the character ET itself. But there were a bunch of us young lively ET’s and my god did we think we were important. And we did important tasks like…er… like filing. And this was no ordinary filing. It was an ET’s filing - filing in alphabetical order, colour coded and all. And we learnt how to do spread sheets the painful way the bank wanted them and we did industry analysis and we did all kinds of other work which now that I look back was very dull and boring and frankly very insignificant. But the atmosphere around us was so encouraging that it did not feel insignificant. My research on the auto industry, compiled by combing through mind numbing data from the chamber of commerce, stock exchange and auto companies was important, or atleast that was how it was conveyed to me. It carried my name and my designation. I don’t really know if Higher Management ever read every detail I agonized over in my reports, probably not, but it was important to me because after all I was an ET – not just “the girl” any more.

That was a while ago and now I am the head of my own department. My sojourn included being Officer In Charge, Assistant Manager, Deputy Manager, Manager, Assistant Vice President, Resident Vice President and now finally Head of Department. With each designation the job expanded and the title itself gave importance to the job. So when Sumera from Dawn called and asked if I would like to write a piece on job descriptions and how they effect they job itself, I hesitated all of three seconds, the time which it took to gulp the cup of tea which the peon brought for The Head Of Marketing and Media Relations.

As it happens the title of a job and the value an organization attaches to it has a tremendous effect on the performance of the job holder. In the corporate world, organizations compete with each other on the basis of salary and then on the basis of job titling. It is an organization’s way of showing the job holder the value they attach to the job. There is no arguing about the fact that the amount an organization pays to a job holder is the direct equivalent of that job holders worth to the organization. It is also equally true that the title of the job determines the importance the organization places on that particular job.

Job titling is a matter of importance also because it determines the scope of the job and how much can be covered under that particular job title. It describes the job and marks out a playing field for the job holder. For example if one is Assistant Manager Liabilities, it means one is restricted to the deposit mobilization side. However if one is Assistant Manager Consumer Banking, it means one can be looking after the assets as well as liabilities side of banking, product development as well as operations. The title change in itself expands or restricts the job.

Job titling is also a very sensitive matter. It involves personalities and ego’s. Countless job holders get de-motivated if they feel that title change does not commensurate with the actual job itself. In a recent job title change at an organization, the Assistant Manager’s title was changed to Senior Officer. Caused an uproar in the ranks of the Assistant Managers. No matter how much the HR department tried to explain that the Senior Officer was every bit as important as the Assistant Manager, grumbling continued. The HR department, which by the way had recently changed its name from Personnel to HR, thought that since this was a change on a country wide level, that the dissatisfaction would die down soon. Six resignations later, HR still hasn’t figured this one out.

Although the mercenary person a friend of mine is, she said they could call her a Toilet Cleaner as long as they paid her a hefty amount. I asked her what if they called her Manager Janitorial Services. She said that sounded good. And then I asked what about CE , Cleanliness Engineer. And she smiled and said she could live with that too but along with the hefty salary. The point of that comes from this rather silly bantering was that whatever we call a job, if it has connotations of importance and respect, it will be viewed and therefore undertaken as such. Simple.

Master Shakespeare said something like, would a rose smell any sweeter if it were called something else. Surprising sentiment from a history’s most articulate word juggler. Very romantic though. Indeed a rose would not smell any sweeter. It would continue to smell as good as it does. But somehow words have a connotation deeper rooted in us than we think. Don’t know about you but I cannot imagine getting excited about two dozen red “cabbages”. They just have to be called Roses to do their job well!