clerk

thumb|200px|Bob Cratchit, the clerk of [[Ebeneezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.]] thumb|right|Two Women's Royal Naval Service clerks aboard during World War I A clerk is a white-collar worker in an administrative professional capacity who conducts record keeping as well as general office tasks, or a grey-collar worker (or to a lesser extent, a blue-collar worker) who performs similar sales-related tasks in a retail environment. The responsibilities of clerical workers commonly include record keeping, filing, staffing service counters, screening callers, and other administrative tasks. In City of London livery companies, the clerk is the chief executive officer.

==History and etymology== The word clerk is derived from the Latin clericus meaning "cleric" or "clergyman", which is the latinisation of the Greek κληρικός (klērikos) from a word meaning a "lot" (in the sense of drawing lots) and hence an "apportionment" or "area of land".