Help Wanted

Summary

In a city of iron façades and gaslit corridors, Mrs. Helen Barker’s drawing-room respectability masks a ticking transaction: her son Jack, freshly degreed, is re-branded as the heir-apparent to Jerrold Scott’s commercial empire, his own surname erased like chalk from a slate. Into this echoing mausoleum of ledgers strides Gertie Meyer, a slip of a girl who mistakes one mahogany door for another and collides with Jack before she ever meets the ogre who signs her pay envelope. Scott, a connoisseur of pulchritude rather than proficiency, installs the ingénue at a salary that outstrips her skill, then proceeds to conduct a slow-master-class in predation—luncheons that drip with champagne and innuendo, dictation sessions that end in petting disguised as consolation. The office itself becomes a panopticon: Crane the bookkeeper culls the plain-but-capable, Miss Wiggins the whistle-blower smuggles warnings through the partitions, and Jack oscillates between filial devotion and insurgent desire. When paternal clutch escalates to assault after hours, the locked door splinters under a son’s fist, the girl vanishes into the night, and two matriarchs—one perfumed, one perspiring—storm the citadel of money and shame, brandishing broken English and righteous fury. What began as a clerical appointment curdles into a referendum on class mobility, bodily autonomy, and the price of keeping up appearances.

Synopsis

Mrs. Helen Barker, mother of son Jack, is married to Jerrold Scott. When Jack finishes college he returns home and is made a partner of his stepfather in the firm of Scott and Son, and at Scott's request he adopts his stepfather's surname. Scott and Son's reception room is full of girls waiting in answer to an advertisement for a stenographer. One pretty girl opens the wrong door and enters the room where Jack is waiting for his father. She and Jack get into conversation and she tells him of her troubles in finding a position; he tells her that it is his first day in business. Scott, entering, greets his son and shows him the sign on the door including him in the firm. Jack tells him that the girl is Gertie Meyer, who is looking for a position and who came to the wrong door. She is sent to the waiting room and Jack is taken to the auditing department to get his first training. The bookkeeper, Crane, who has been with the firm 20 years, and knows Scott's requirements for a secretary, selects those who are competent but lacking in physical charms, and sends them in for interview. One of these is Miss Wiggins, but she is too clever and is sent out to interview Crane. He retains her for some extra work on his own account. Scott, coming to the door, selects Gertie and dismisses the others. He asks her many personal questions, but nothing about her efficiency, and accepts her at a higher salary than she asked of him. Gertie, delighted with her position, begs her mother to leave the laundry where she is working, and brings her two small brothers home from the orphan asylum. All goes well the first week, except that with the first dictation Gertie makes a hopeless failure of the letters, and when she cries over her failure, Scott, in a fatherly way, puts his arms around her, and tells her that it was a difficult letter, and he will straighten it out. When he goes out, and while Gertie is making the corrections, Miss Wiggins slips into the private office and warns Gertie about Scott, tells her just what to expect, and asks her if he has taken her to luncheon yet. Gertie resents this and warmly defends her benefactor. When Scott returns and learns that Gertie has no money to pay for her luncheon, he persuades her to go to a restaurant and lunch with him. She dissents, but finally goes. She is awed by the fashionable people, the music, and the odd names on the menu. She refuses to have a cocktail, but Scott drinks. Seeing Paul Montgomery, his daughter's fiancé, in the restaurant, he feigns sudden illness to avoid speaking to him, gives Gertie a $10 bill and tells her he must rush off to meet an engagement and for her to pay for the meal. By the end of the first month at her position, Gertie has often dined with her employer, but her sense of propriety never ceases to be outraged by his amorous demonstrations. In the meantime, Jack Scott, who has had a growing interest in her since the morning she applied for the position, declares his love for her. and asks her to marry him. In her perplexity, Gertie goes to the Y.W.C.A. to call upon Miss Wiggins, who tells her to marry Jack if he really loves her, and receive no more attentions from the father. Gertie resolves to do this, even though she lose her position. The next day Scott asks Gertie to remain at the office in the evening, to do some work for him. Jack, not seeing Gertie leave the office, secretly waits for her. When the other employees are gone, Scott locks the door, seizes Gertie in his arms, and declares his love for her. In the struggle which follows, Gertie screams for help. Jack smashes through the door and defends the girl. Scott does not know of their love, and orders Jack out. In the excitement Gertie slips out. Jack, not knowing her address, hires detectives to locate her. Gertie, arriving home, is denounced by her mother for bringing the family to poverty again, and threatens to go to Scott's house herself and take a lawyer with her. Gertie goes out to a telephone and calls Jack, and at his request meets him at his home. Together they wait for his mother and sister, but when they come they do not receive Gertie with open arms. Scott and his lawyer Stuart are in the library discussing the affair when the butler gives away the fact that Jack and his fiancée are in the house with Mrs. Scott. Mrs. Meyers, enraged that detectives should be sent to her house, and fearing that the Scott millions have led away her little girl, bursts in and denounces Scott in her broken German-English. Stuart is authorized to provide financial aid for the Meyer family, and when Scott learns that Jack has not told the whole story to Mrs. Scott, he forgives everything, thanks his lucky stars that his wife does not know his perfidy, and accepts the situation in a truly happy way.