“She’s _stupid_!” she told me, with fierce exasperation. “I’ve told Mr.
Graves several times that she doesn’t measure up to our standard of
efficiency. I don’t see why he keeps her on!”
“Beauty in daily life,” said I. “It’s what Morris recommended. She’s an
ornament to the office, Miss Kelly. She has artistic value.”
“Superfluous ornaments have no value anywhere,” said Miss Kelly. “I
worked once for an interior decorator, and I learned that. A thing must
not only be beautiful in itself, but in harmony with its surroundings,
and serving some definite purpose. She isn’t and doesn’t, and she ought
to be scrapped!”
Now not only was Miss Kelly a notably good-looking young woman, and
intelligent and alert and sensible, but she was infallible. Graves knew
it. He had had other disagreements with her, and had always been
worsted. Still, for a time, he defied her in regard to Miss Clare.
“D’you know,” he said to me, “I hate like poison to discharge that poor
girl! You see, this is her first job, and it’ll be hard for her to get
another, with only a four weeks’ record here.”
“Oh, no, Graves,” said I. “Not at all! After you’ve talked to her and
pointed out her faults, she--well, she’ll get rid of her faults, don’t
you see? And after that--”
Then Graves declared, with a sort of magnificence:
“She hasn’t any _faults_, exactly. It’s lack of training that’s the
trouble. If she could stay on here a little longer, she’d do as well as
the others--and better. She has brains!”
“Why can’t she stay?” I asked.
“Her output’s below the average,” he said dismally. “Miss Kelly keeps
charts and so on.” He scowled. “Miss Kelly’s worth her weight in gold,
and all that,” he said, “but she’s pig-headed. I’ve tried to explain to
her that it’s actually more efficient to keep and train an employee,
even if you have to shift him to another department, than to break in a
new one. I’ve shown her in black and white what the actual cost of this
eternal hiring and firing is; but no! She jumps down my throat with a
lot of her own figures about what this Miss Clare costs the department
every day. Hair-splitting, that’s all it is!”
Graves should have been warned, each time he opened his mouth, that what
he said would be used against him. Of course this was. Each time he
dealt the death blow, we reminded him of the cost of this eternal hiring
and firing, and how much more efficient it was, and so on.
Miss Clare was shifted out of Miss Kelly’s department into another,
which had a human man, young Allen, at its head; but he, too, rebelled.
“She won’t do,” he said to Graves. “She tries, but she’s--well, I don’t
know just what the trouble is. She’s simply not on the job.”
“I’ll have a talk with her,” said Graves. “I’ll see if I can find out
what’s wrong.”