The Printshop Girl

She was a printshop girl. It sounded to her like one of those old fashioned and now somewhat archaic job designations like librarian, secretary, or archivist. A job nobody has anymore, as least not in the traditional sense. Librarians these days don't file and catalogue books on little notecards that take up drawers upon drawers of space. They don't sit with spectacled faces and hair tied up tight in a bun, shushing noisy people like they used to, at least in the movies. Now they catalogue everything on a digital database that only takes up as much physical space as a computer on a desk does. And now they sit at a service desk behind a computer screen, checking out books like a cashier ringing through a customer at some retail store. Likewise, printshop girls for the most part no longer print with large printing presses with roll on inks, nor do they mix ink colours to get just the right tone and shade. Rather, they use those newfangled but wholly unromantic Xerox machines with screens that have so many buttons and so many possible settings that it takes at least a week of training to master. Still, even though it wasn't as romantic as the old fashioned type of printing, she still liked to romanticize her self-ascribed job title. Printshop girl. Technically she was a "front counter customer service representative" at a printshop, but she liked to think of herself as a printshop girl instead. Like saying secretary rather than a "administrative assistant" - outdated and politically incorrect, but evoking the romantic idea of a 1940's secretary in an old hollywood film noir picture, or the sexy secretary of adolescent boys' fantasies. She liked to ruminate on things like this, and she thought - there's something about job titles like "administrative assistant." They are devoid of romance and there's something sexless about them. Perhaps they are meant to be gender neutral and more politically correct - but in being such, they also lose something. Rather than inspiring the imagination - whether that of a young woman on a job hunt, or that of a young man fantasizing - they inspire a feeling of boredom because they sound so technical and formal. Let's be honest - no little girl ever dreamt of becoming an "administrative assistant," but there are probably at least a few weird ones who at some point dreamt of being a secretary. Likewise, there have probably never been any little girls who dreamt of working at, say, a Staples store with aisles of office supplies up the yin-yang, but there are probably at least a few who dreamt of working in a printshop. A small little printshop run by a handful of people, rather than a dozen disinterested and likely underpaid employees wearing matching uniforms, wandering from aisle to aisle aimlessly.