PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING

by John M. Floyd

Two sanitation engineers being conveyed
on their environment service vehicle.

We at Criminal Brief often find ourselves writing about word usage and wordplay. A few of us (excluding me but including JLW) are experts on the subject. And the one thing we all seem to agree on is that the topic can be fascinating.

I was reminded of this while watching TV the other night, and a car-dealership commercial came on. I usually ignore them as the irritants that they are, like mosquitoes, but this one caught my attention. The owner was bellowing something like “Come on down to our auto park at the corner of—”

Auto park? Why didn’t he just say car lot?

I knew why, of course. All of us—not just salesmen and politicians—tend to put a positive spin on things that might not otherwise sound so positive. Whether it’s a job reassignment or an investment opportunity or a description of a new girlfriend, we’re inclined to paint things in as rosy a light as possible.

Selective amnesia

Writers are accomplished spin-doctors. In cover letters and query letters, we short-fiction folks include only the most respectable places that have featured our work; rarely do we point out the stories we might’ve published in folded pamphlets distributed free on streetcorners in the South Bronx. And that’s okay—we’re not lying, or being unethical. It’s just literary bio mechanics, and a similar approach is used in everything from press releases to job interviews.

Consider what you say at your class reunion, when you’re asked what you’ve been doing for the past quarter-century. If you hired on two months ago at a prestigious firm of some kind, that’s the career you mention to the former homecoming queen—not the ten years you spent as a telemarketer or the three-to-five you served for tax evasion. Everybody has a certain amount of less-than-pearly-white laundry in the hamper. Even Spielberg and Lucas have a few 1941s and Howard the Ducks in their past, and I have a feeling Dustin Hoffman is more comfortable talking about Kramer vs. Kramer than about Ishtar.

Creative writing

Just as this careful withholding of the painful truth is expected and natural, so is the dressing-up of job titles. A secretary these days is an administrative assistant, a salesperson is a marketing rep, a foreman is a construction supervisor, a welfare worker is a human resource professional. And I’ve come to believe that the term “technical specialist” can now be applied to anything from a programmer to a help-desk worker to an office gofer. If that isn’t enough lipstick for your pig, a recent Google search revealed the following updated title possibilities:

shelf stacker—stock replenishment coordinator
chimney sweep – flueologist
cafeteria worker—nourishment production assistant
gardener—horticultural maintenance officer
gas pump attendant—petroleum transfer operative
window cleaner—vision clearance technician
sewage worker—waste treatment engineer

I even heard somebody the other day refer to a salesman as a technology evangelist. And in case I’m stepping on any toes here, let me confess that my glorified job title with IBM (I worked as a systems engineer on bank application software) was Senior Finance Industry Specialist.

Matter of fact, I just had a thought. I’m not a struggling writer. I’m a mystery author.

Excuse me while I go change the lettering on my door . . .