Everyone’s an office professional.  “I’m not a secretary,” one woman here at VOA huffed at me one day.  Her proper title, she’d have me know, is “admin officer.”  The word “secretary” is just too servile for fluffed-up people and sensitive times.

I believe you could get arrested for calling someone a “maid.”  Don’t you know that these people are “domestic assistants”?  Or that the last airplane passenger who asked for more peanuts from a “stewardess” ended up in attitude-adjustment therapy and on the Transportation Security Administration’s no-fly list.

God help the hospital patient — sorry, I mean community wellness facility short-term resident — who cries out in the night, “Nurse! Nurse!”

If you want that painkiller, the proper call is “Health Care Professional!  Health Care Professional!”

And watch yourself the next time you’re in the market for a car.  Dealerships don’t have “salesmen” any more.  To spare them from low self-esteem, they’re “sales associates,” “account executives,” or “retail representatives,” and you’d best address them as such.

Even traveling salesmen, already the brunt of barnyard humor for their supposedly amorous romps with milkmaids, have earned society’s admiration.  They are now “territory managers.”

Perhaps you’ve heard of Arthur Miller’s classic Broadway play “Death of a Salesman.”  In it, washed-up salesman Willy Loman’s wife lashes out at the unfair treatment of her husband.  “Attention must be paid,” to him, she railed. “He’s not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog.”

Attention is being paid to these folks.  We’re giving them more estimable titles.  These days, Miller would be shamed into calling his play, “Death of a Corporate Sales Representative.”

These gussied-up titles are “euphemisms.”  They’re agreeable-sounding terms replacing what are deemed to be offensive or disparaging ones.  They soften the stigma of certain jobs, or puff up workers’ status and self-worth.  Just as companies no longer fire people — they “downsize” or make “personnel adjustments” — we have invented all sorts of new and soothing job titles for just about everybody.

The standard example — though I think this is invoked mostly for fun to emphasize the absurdity of euphemisms — is calling a garbage man a “sanitary engineer.”  I was a garbage man when I went home to Ohio from college each summer.

Even worse, actually.  I was a sewer cleaner.

Nobody called me a “waste removal officer.”  The men who worked the trucks year-round — grizzled and grumbly guys who downed lunchtime shots and beers with their kielbasa sandwiches at corner bars — didn’t know the meaning of “politically correct.”

They called me “no-good dumb stupid college kid.”

And they didn’t say “kid,” either.

These days, might even they be attuned to the need to respect their fellow workers?  (Wait. Is “fellow” sexist?  Make that their “fellow and sister workers.”)

Possibly.  After all, mere janitors don’t empty our wastebaskets any more.  “Building-services specialists” do.  When did “custodian” become offensive?

Attorneys, who, lest you forget, are not mere “lawyers,” represent alleged “offenders” whom “law-enforcement officers” — not police and certainly not “cops” — arrest.  There are no crooks and thieves any more.  Prostitutes have become “escorts” or “sex workers.”

Old people are “seniors,” “Third Agers,” or “seasoned citizens.”

Wait, you say.  Being old isn’t a job.  Oh, yeah?

I’m sure glad I didn’t get an engineering degree in school.  Everyone and his uncle is an engineer these days except train engineers.  (They’re “operators.”)  The woman who came to fix the thermostat in our office wore a name patch that identified her as a “building engineer,” and there’s a whole slew of “systems engineers” up in the tekky department.

Sorry.  Make that  the “Computing Services Division.”

Not long ago, someone appeared outside my window at work.  Not a window-washer.  Heavens, no.  He was the “vision clearance engineer.”

OK, I made that one up.  He was a “transparent wall maintenance officer.”   I didn’t make that up, but I stole it from someone who did.

I’m sure the fellow with the squeegee and window cleaner would laugh and share his impressive new title with his buddy, the “cemetery operative.”

That’s right.  You don’t think there are “gravediggers” any more, do you?

If we can’t come up with a lofty job title, we make each person the “coordinator” of something that looks spiffy on a business card.  And just in case someone doesn’t have a high-sounding job title, we refer to him or her as a “team member.”  It’s a practice borrowed from sports, meant to make the scrubs feel like superstars.

Attention must be paid to everyone!  Writer Michele McInerney at the Kansas City Business Journal found what she swears is an actual example.  Mere painters don’t paint houses in Kansas City, she reports.  “Liquid recoating specialists” do.

Wait till the team leaders who take America’s administrative professionals out to lunch next month hear about that one!

I must close by apologizing to any and all “bosses,” including my own many layers of them, for using that word in my opening paragraph.

In an insensitive moment, I forgot that “boss” has negative connotations.  “Bossy” people are autocratic, headstrong. “Boss” Tweed was a corrupt New York City politician.

Kids think Bossy is a cow.

Trail bosses cracked whips. Mob boss Al Capone ordered people “rubbed out.”

Even mobsters use euphemisms.

So I stand reminded.  It won’t be bosses taking their administrative professionals out to lunch next month.  It will be “employers,” “senior managers,” “level one supervisors,” and “administrators” who pick up the check.

Administrators and their administrative assistants, administering over burgers and beer.  One can only imagine the snappy repartee.