Lynn Peril: Do Secretaries Have a Future?

Lynn Peril, a secretary, is the author of Swimming in the Steno Pool: A Retro Guide to Making It in the Office.

THE 1950s and ’60s brought many new things to American offices, including the Xerox machine, word processing and — perhaps less famously — the first National Secretaries Day, in 1952. Secretaries of that era envisioned a rosy future, and many saw their jobs as a ticket to a better life.

In 1961, the trade magazine Today’s Secretary predicted that, 50 years hence, the “secretary of the future” would start her workday at noon and take monthlong vacations thanks to the “electronic computer.” According to another optimistic assessment, secretaries (transported through office hallways “via trackless plastic bubble”) would be in ever-higher demand because of what was vaguely referred to as “business expansion.”

But nearly 60 years later, on the date now promoted as Administrative Professionals Day, we’re living through the end of a recession in which around two million administrative and clerical workers lost their jobs after bosses discovered they could handle their calendars and travel arrangements online and rendered their assistants expendable....