pencil-pusher

pencil pusher

One who has a boring, meaningless office job. Primarily heard in US. I refuse to be a pencil pusher the rest of my life. I have big dreams and goals!
See also: pencil, pusher
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

pencil-pusher

n. a bureaucrat; a clerk; an office worker. (see also paper-pusher.) Look here, you lousy pencil-pusher, I want to talk to your boss!
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
See also:
  • pencil pusher
  • a pen pusher
  • pen pusher
  • live a dog's life
  • lead a dog's life
  • in pencil
  • pencil out
  • pencil in
  • pencil me in
  • a one-horse town
References in periodicals archive
Charnley, a long-time St James' Park pencil-pusher with no apparent experience of top-flight sport outside the four walls of his office, has climbed his way up the company ladder.
Don't be dominated by some consultant pencil-pusher who just graduated.
DEATH SENTENCE DELIVERED with all the subtle nuances and sensitivity you'd expect from the director of Saw, Kevin Bacon manages to go from straight-laced pencil-pusher to shotgun-sporting killing machine after his son's killed before most of the audience had finished their nachos.
You can bet your life that the pencil-pusher who didn't cough up was getting paid.
As this pencil-pusher left, he thought to ask him: "I wonder why the people dealing with the girl who starved to death in Birmingham weren't as persistent?"
"People see that (he) isn't just a pencil-pusher, a financial guy or something like that."
Whether ye be a landlubbin' pencil-pusher or a true salty sea dog, Pirate Jesus, with his parrot, patch, and lopsided grin, is concerned for your salvation.
How often, after all, do a meek pencil-pusher and a portly scam artist share the limelight, without a "tall, dark and handsome" anywhere in the script?
Intentionally or not, the film greatly resembles Martin Scorsese's "After Hours" in its first two-thirds, both in its depiction of a pencil-pusher trapped in a nightmare of an evening, and in its use of synthesizer music and a ticking clock to compound the sense of claustrophobia.
Once again, the same holds true for Joe Blow as for the Pallatunia pencil-pusher: Even if the subject is The National Debt, what does it mean to the average guy or gal in Godzillaville?
I'm a hands-on, outdoors-type person more than a pencil-pusher."
Clearly there are also some other secret ingredients, but the pencil-pusher was not for passing them on.
THE Office star Mackenzie Crook says he was just like his nerdy pencil-pusher character Gareth as a teenager.
The leading pencil-pusher has already created a series of breathtaking cars, such as the current Jaguar XK coupe and roadster, as well as several of the latest Aston Martin supercars.
It was one of the first models created by BMW's controversial pencil-pusher Chris Bangle, and it shook the Establishment.