It’s Time to End Secretaries Day

Let’s end Secretaries Day.

It’s coming up on April 22, and this should be the last year it’s observed.

The “holiday” — more recently updated to be called Administrative Professionals Day — was created by the International Association of Administrative Professionals back in 1952, when the organization was known as the National Secretaries Association. If you haven’t encountered this celebration in your office, it’s intended to recognize the work of administrative assistants, receptionists and other administrative support workers — with cards, flowers, and lunches.

Administrative workers certainly do deserve recognition and appreciation. They often have tough jobs, they serve a key role in keeping organizations functioning efficiently and, in many cases, they function as the right hands of busy executives who wouldn’t be able to perform their jobs without them. And support work is hard — anyone who has ever worked in an admin role can tell you it’s a lot harder than it looks from the outside. Good admins make it look easy — being calm and unflappable is part of doing the job well — but it can be stressful, challenging work.

So given all that, what’s the problem with Secretaries Day? Why wouldn’t we want a holiday to mark these contributions?

The problem with Secretaries Day is that it’s patronizing and demeaning. Having a special holiday for administrative workers separates admins from the rest of the office, marking their work as somehow different from other professional occupations. After all, if we value our admins as we would any other employees, why do we require a special holiday to mark their contributions? We don’t have Accountants Day, Webmaster Day or Pharmacists Day. What is it about administrative workers that requires setting aside a calendar day to recognize their work?

The argument in favor of Secretaries Day appears to be that the role is one that often isn’t fully appreciated by the people who admins support. But the day itself actually adds to that problem, by further ghettoizing the job and pigeonholing admins into a different category from everyone else. It says: “You are different from the rest of us, and we’re going to patronize you with a card rather than giving you year-round professional respect.” The day itself actually adds to the problem that it was created to address.

Complicating matters further, there’s even confusion in some offices over who is supposed to be recognized for the holiday and who isn’t. There are sometimes hurt feelings when someone isn’t recognized but wanted to be, and even more hurt feelings when someone gets a card and didn’t realize he or she was seen as support staff. Plus, some admins are paid more than the people plying them with cards and lunches on Secretaries Day, so they understandably find it awkward to be treated by people who make half as much as they do.

On to top of that, plenty of managers spot how the holiday is patronizing the very people who they want to value, but worry they’ll offend their assistants or make them feel unvalued if they don’t recognize the day in some way. It’s on the calendar, after all, and people know about it! And so the cycle is perpetuated, even though people on both sides of the exchange are often feeling awkward and uncomfortable about it.

And making matters still worse, it sure does feel like there’s a gender component to all of this. The majority of admins are still women, and there’s something particularly condescending about a holiday that says “rather than paying you well and showing you year-round respect, we’re going to give you flowers and trinkets.” And it’s surely no coincidence that many of the traditional gifts for the day — flowers and perfume — are ones that tend to be gendered in our culture. When is the last time someone gave the mailroom guy a rose as thanks for a job well done?

The bottom line is this: Admins deserve respect and appreciation year-round. They deserve professional development opportunities, useful feedback and to be taken seriously as people doing important professional work. And they deserve to be compensated and rewarded in accordance with the work they perform.

Flowers and a card once a year are no substitute for any of that, and continuing the practice threatens to keep them from being seen as professionals like every other professional in the workplace.

Alison Green writes the popular Ask a Manager blog, where she dispenses advice on career, job search and management issues. She’s the author of “How to Get a Job: Secrets of a Hiring Manager,” co-author of “Managing to Change the World: The Nonprofit Manager’s Guide to Getting Results” and the former chief of staff of a successful nonprofit organization, where she oversaw day-to-day staff management.