office wife
n.— «Then there is the “office wife” role that the woman behind the typewriter or the data machine or the steno pad is somehow expected to perform…duties that never appear on a job description. A secretary must be a waitress, they say, who serves coffee and snacks to the boss; a personal shopper, who buys birthday presents for the wife; a nurse, who administers his eyedrops; a maid, who tends plants and dusts.» —“Secretaries See Parallels In ‘Nine To Five’” by Georgia Dullea New York Times Jan. 2, 1981. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
Sean in Oneonta, New York, says that when he was growing up in New Jersey, his family would pile in the car and set off on a surprise adventure, whether a short distance or long, and the kids would be told only that they were going on Buxtehude...