Quick, call a Transparent Wall Cleansing Executive!

If you're walking down the public realm today, perhaps on your way to throw something in the civic amenity site, and you spy a school crossing patroller in a state of existential confusion, there's no need to summon a civil enforcement officer (or even a metropolitan authorised crime-fighting officer) to comfort her. She'll just be reflecting on the change in her status, now that she's back to being a plain old lollipop lady.

Harrow Council, in north London, has just issued a ban on elaborate jargon words that mask simple concepts. So from now on, "public realm" is just a road again, a "civic amenity site" (though it sounds like an emergency lavatory) goes back to being a rubbish tip, and a "civil enforcement officer" returns to the primeval shame of being a traffic warden.

A councillor called Paul Osborn said: "Every organisation uses jargon, but we know that councils have been among the worst offenders. Our residents want to hear plain speaking and that is what we will deliver." Amusingly, Mr Osborn's title is still the not-uncumbersome "Portfolio Holder for Communication".

Everybody will welcome any initiative for plain speaking at local-government level, but it would be a shame if Harrow's clean-out of verbiage spelt the end for the fancy job title, a form of nomenclature that has given the world much amusement over the past 20 years or so. Is it really true that the guys who clean the windows of the Empire State Building aren't window cleaners but Transparent Wall Cleansing Executives? Or that the bloke plying the rake and hoe in Kew Gardens probably answered a classified ad for a Technical Horticultural Maintenance Officer? Or did someone make them up for a laugh?

Titles are important. They mean a lot to us. Manipulative employers have known for years that some of their charges would rather have a grander job title than a pay rise. So if the caretaker at your school is kicking up a fuss about his long hours and paltry wages, simply re-brand him as a Regional Head of Services, Infrastructure and Procurement, and your worries will be over.

It would be nice to know who invents these long, jewelled threads of circumlocution, obfuscation and pomposity. Is there a Committee of Periphrastic Job-Titling that meets in secret every month? Is it, in fact, the work of just one man, like that chap who does all the gravelly voice-overs for Hollywood trailers? If so, I admire his way with self-importance (according to the Plain English Campaign, a ticket inspector is now a Revenue Protection Officer) and the fastidious way he gives inelegant jobs rather elegant names; so that a shelf-stacker in a supermarket becomes an Ambient Replenishment Controller, while a chiropodist is discreetly upgraded to a Foot Health Gain Facilitator. And who do you think lurks behind the title of Education Centre Nourishment Production Assistant? A dinner lady.

We may smile at these polysyllabic follies and excessively Latinate constructions, but they are like Shakespearean sonnets when compared with the lunatic fringe of job titles in US business. In a corporate universe where every human transaction must be positive and gung-ho, and every section head must be inspirational to his or her troops at all times, everyone is given dismayingly saccharine titles.

The personnel manager becomes Chief Inspiration Officer, while the lady in charge of staff recruitment basks in the glory of being a "VP of Happiness". Meanwhile, in Phoenix, Arizona, the lady who sits at the front-office desk of Scottsdale Unified School District isn't, in fact, the receptionist. Uh-uh – she's the Director of First Impressions.

The rise of the VP may have been where it all went wrong in the 1970s, when everyone on a company mast-head was given vice-presidential status followed by a little bracket indicating in which precise area of expertise – marketing, strategic planning, research and development, washroom maintenance – they veeped. The same is true in newspapers, where the upper management levels are awash with executive, assistant and associate editors, all bearing their explanatory brackets. My favourite example isn't on a newspaper – it's Dennis Wise, the former Chelsea captain, now at Newcastle, where his official title is Executive Director (Football), just in case anyone thought he was there to supervise the feng shui.

It's all gone a bit ridiculous, hasn't it? It's about time someone called a halt to it, even if it's Harrow Council. But when you've hacked through all the pompous polysyllables and get-over-yourself administrative verbiage, what are the best and worst fancy job titles? My favourite is Flueologist, which sounds like an expert in the male head-cold but is actually a re-branded version of "chimney sweep". I think that's rather witty. And the worst? A dead heat, I think, between Space Consultant, the new name for estate agent, which mendaciously suggests a man who can tell you all about the galaxy; and – the winner of a Stateside gobbledegook competition – Vision Clearance Executive, meaning a window cleaner, which misleadingly suggests he will do something to clear your vision rather than wipe a piece of glass.

Although I do have a soft spot for Petroleum Transfer Engineer, a title I shall use freely next time I find one of that noble but dwindling breed, standing with his rag and dipstick by a petrol pump on Highway 66.

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