My title is technician, but I find the title too lofty, I tell people I am a mechanic.
I worked at a place that had dedicated oil change guys, that liked to call themselves "Lube Techs", I would always bust out laughing at them and call them by their proper names. Pit monkeys.

my dad likes to tell me he was a "Petroleum Distribution Engineer" in highschool.... aka he worked at a Chevron full service gas station

Plus REP for Biosurfers avatar. (more?)

RickV's, welllllllllllllllll, keep it in the closet.

Rusty...it's Elisha Cuthbert, a google search will come up with tons of hits. She's a semi well known actress

I'm an electronics technician, how's this for a hoity-toity title;

Principal Technical Officer

ok, I have a counter example - only one, but...

in Oregon's wine industry, the young people doing the actual hard work in the winery - moving heavy stuff around, etc. are usually called barrel monkeys, or cellar monkeys.

I know a surgeon who wishes hard that he could go work for a top winemaker as a cellar monkey for a top winemaker.

Also, the famous Veronique Drouhin (of the famed Burgundy negociant family) who now runs Domaine Drouhine Oregon, a top winery here, used to work as a cellar monkey, IIRC for Amity.

So, there you have what are essentially interns to a highly artisanal job being called something that is if anything below their station.


- other counter examples?

I have personally lifted up and installed over 5000 windows. You would not believe all the certs one can get as a window installer. I don't have even one. So when some cat is talking to me about all the certification he has for window installation, I just have to ask how many he has put in.

Here is a typical window order for a replacement wood unit:

30 x 48, 1 3/8 sash, double hung, full bound bald frame with sill, pine - paint grade, redwood sill with 3" horns measured at mid point, dual glaze clear, true divided light - 12/4, sash horns, ovolo sticking, 5 1/4 wall condition , acme balance, white weatherstrip, screen and hardware.

I just ask one of these certified installers what is missing there. (Standard layout vs. unequal lights or thicker stiles/rails.)

They flunk.

I install troubleshoot and turn up telecommunications equipment. They call it an install technician. You can call it whatever you want. If I have to go to college to be called a technician I'll skip it. Im not paying tens of thousands so I can be called anything.

They can call me whatever they want as long as they tack on "...and all around Bon Vivant" at the end.

When I jumped to our US operation in 1997, I told my boss (owner) that I needed a title in the US to be taken seriously. I suggested either Sales or Product Manager. He put them both on the card. I have been that ever since.

Ian

Oh yeah, I forgot that one... I was also a "Principal Systems Technical Specialist"

Any one having problems with a multi-quote response? Anyhoo...my first job out of college was doing R&D for IBM at RTP, NC. Back then, The Research Triangle area was reported to have the highest concentration of PHDs in the world (since eclipsed by Silicon Valley). Some of the "best and the brighest" there didn't even have college degrees back then. Throughout my career, a "piece of paper" or a title didn't really mean squat...you either "had it" or you didn't.

Ditto, I tell people that I am an auto mechanic. I was first labelled a technician at a Sears Auto Service where I worked nights slinging tires. I worked at a transmission shop by day, where I was the r&r floor monkey. I worked at Sears for two weeks, took a 20 question test on the little computer, and was suddenly a "technician" a few more tests, and I was an installer technician specialist.. The best guy there could not have handled my morning coffee at my day job, but he sure did have an important sounding title.

Fred, I have stripes down my sleeve to the floor and a stack of credentials from various manufacturers, and by rights I am a technician, but I still prefer to not use the title. The only reason there are patches on my jacket is to give a customer a warm and fuzzy when I have to talk to them.
The whole idea of making someone feel special about what they do by adding a title to it is because people don't take quiet pride in their labors anymore. We are a dieing breed.

I'm a Network Engineer. That's rarely the official title, but the only way anyone in IT has any clue about what I do is if I tell them "network engineer". I didn't finish college, and I definitely haven't taken a PE exam (there isn't one for what I do). The closest I could come to something like a PE exam would be to get the CCIE. I'm ok with the name. I think I do perform engineering work of a sort. I understand that it's definitely not the same as being an EE, ME, CivE or Chem E that has taken the exam after getting a degree. I don't mind.

I won't mind if it secretly (or not secretly) peeves some of you PEs. You worked hard for the E, you're entitled.

The one that I'm starting to hear these days that REALLY makes me laugh is


TECHNOLOGIST

I'm still not sure what that is.

I think that anyone who can find porn online should get a plastic (or virtual) engineering-technology-participation trophy. I mean it's damn near the same as knowing when and how to use Euler equations. . . .lotion . . Euler .. tumatetoe / toemautoe

FWIW



Ferdinand Porsche[2] (3 September 1875 – 30 January 1951) was an Austrian-German automotive engineer and honorary Doctor of Engineering. He is best known for creating the first hybrid vehicle (gasoline-electric), the Volkswagen Beetle, and the Mercedes-Benz SS/SSK, as well as the first of many Porsche automobiles. Porsche designed the 1923 Benz Tropfenwagen, which was the first race car with mid-engine, rear-wheel drive layout


He managed to attend classes at the Imperial Technical School in Reichenberg (Czech: Liberec) at night while helping his father in his mechanical shop by day. Thanks to a referral, Porsche landed a job with the Béla Egger Electrical company in Vienna when he turned 18.[6] In Vienna he would sneak into the local university whenever he could after work. Beyond auditing classes there, Porsche had never received any higher engineering education

I wonder what that dude called himself?

I retired,after 50 years of hands on aircraft maintenance,repair,& manufacture.
plus a few other odds and ends. I have had Airline Captains refer to me as "The dirty fingernail brigade"and several other somewhat derogative titles!
My official title /qualification was L.A.M.E---used in Australia,U.K.,New Zealand
and other once Commonwealth countries---It is Licenced Aircraft Maintenance Engineer.--so I was just another grease monkey.
I had a standard reply for the question ---What is the difference between a pilot and an engineer?
A: The engineer/mechanic has to wash his hands, BEFORE going to the.toilet.
I could fix your Boeing, but not too many of my friends have them!

This is true, but it's a great song none the less.