Schumpeter

Business and management

Title inflation

Title inflation (continued)

Jul 28th 2010, 12:39 by Schumpeter

AN AMERICAN colleague of mine recently bought a kayak. The salesman, a recent college graduate, proved to be pleasant and helpful, in the way that so many American sales assistants are. He offered to give my colleague a free kayaking lesson, and handed him his business card. His job title was "paddling consultant". (See my earlier piece on how "Inflation in job titles is approaching Weimar levels")

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Heimdall

My favorite actual title was when I was working in the bowels of the mega-dormatory food service (serving 2,000 thrice daily), where I supervised the scraping and washing of dishes by underlings surprisingly even lower on the totem pole than me. What else?

"Dish Captain"

I still sometimes aspire to my former greatness...

About Schumpeter

In this blog, our Schumpeter columnist and his colleagues provide commentary and analysis on the topics of business, finance and management. The blog takes its name from Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian-American economist who likened capitalism to a "perennial gale of creative destruction"

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