As Max Andro explained to her much later, after so many things had happened, she brought to that menial clerical job certain characteristics that always differentiate what Max called “the zecutive-type peoples.” She had an avid curiosity about how everything was done and why it was done in that manner. She had the energy of a platoon of Marines. She was totally indifferent to what people thought of her. And she did her work more quickly and more accurately and more completely than was expected or anticipated.
She went to work in the fall, and by February, she knew every process in the production areas, every office procedure in all departments, all interrelationships of authority and responsibility, all plans, programs, and problems in the marketing of the Andro line. She watched, thought, and asked questions. And when she saw anything that looked stupid, careless, or unwise, she popped a terse, dated memo into the suggestion box. After many weeks had passed and no action had been taken on any suggestion, she had copies made of the carbons of her suggestions, mailed them special delivery to Max Andro’s home, along with a note saying, “Am I dropping feathers down wells? Is the suggestion box never emptied? Or are all my ideas ridiculous?”
Max Andro summoned her to his office the following Monday morning. He was a broad, bald man with small, hooded eyes, great impassivity, chronic asthma, and an accent often imitated in the trade. She sat across the desk from him. He breathed audibly as he leafed through her memos.
“This one,” he said suddenly. “ ‘New package on Princess Fifty is a fiasco. Who would ever buy a second bottle?’ ” He took the item in question out of a desk drawer and pushed it to her. “Show the fiasco.”
She took the bottle. “It’s very graceful and pretty and feminine and impractical. A woman is going to take out the stopper and lay it down on a flat surface, like this. It rolls like a ball. See? If there were a flat spot or if it were tapered, okay. But when it rolls into her lap and spots her skirt, she’s going to remember it. Besides that, the base on the bottle is too narrow. Look.” She hit the edge of the desk; the open bottle fell over, and the pungent fluid spilled toward Max Andro.
He pushed his chair back with astonishing agility and caught the fluid before it dripped onto the rug. “What you doing?” he demanded.
“Showing you a fiasco, Mr. Andro.”
He stared at her and then began to laugh. He sat down, chuckling, and then the heavy sound died away. “Gets too big, this place,” he said morosely. “Too big. One time, before you were born, me and one boy to help, working in my cellar, we were Andro Cosmetics. Mixing, packaging, labeling. The car was full, I’d go sell. Come back and make more. The lotion only. That was first.” He tapped the stack of her memos. “None of these I saw. Fourteen are here. Two are wrong. Eight are right, but not important. Four are important. Those I should be seeing. Today I bang together some heads. Okay.”
She sensed a note of dismissal and started to stand up.
“Keep sitting there, please.” He studied her, his expression approving. “Pretty girl, eh?”
“Thank you, Mr. Andro.”
“But not weak and helpless, eh? What you want?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I had your card brought here first. Finished college. Married to a teacher. Good typist. Put these notes in the box. Mail copies to me. What kind of typist is this we got here? Some people going to hate you for this, Mrs. Molly Murdock. Your neck is out. For what reason, eh?”
She frowned and said slowly, “People who put up suggestion boxes must want to encourage suggestions. If all I did was type things I couldn’t understand, I’d go out of my mind. So I just tried to learn something about the company, and when I saw something I thought could be improved, I wrote a suggestion. When nothing happened, I decided to make something happen. If people hate me for that, they’re being very small and silly. If I’m useful, I’ll stay. If I’m a nuisance, I’ll go work somewhere else.”
“What do you want right now from Max Andro? More money?”
“That would be nice. But mostly I’d rather be doing something more interesting than typing and filing.”
He smiled broadly, then pressed the switch on his intercom and said, “Send in to me Harry Burkett.” He leaned back and said, “You know Harry?”
“I know he’s in charge of sales promotion and advertising, but I’ve never talked to him.”
“For ten dollars more a week, you’re working for him. He won’t like it. He won’t like you. Women who work for him, they cry twice a day, like a coffee break.”
“That’s the silliest thing I ever heard of!”
“I think you are going to be one big surprise to Harry.”
That was the way it all started. Burkett assigned her pointless, boring chores. He was excessively, sneeringly nasty. She soon realized he was trying to force her to quit, and by that summer, she understood why he was frightened of her. Harry Burkett was an insecure, incompetent man. In spite of the fact that all Andro advertising was handled through the Darmond, Birch, and Hollis agency, Harry Burkett had built up a large departmental staff within the company, composed — with the sole exception of Molly — of people who feared him. At that time, the annual fee for the agency’s services came to three and a half million dollars; but Harry Burkett picked at and criticized every campaign the agency devised, with the result that their impact was seriously weakened. Once his reluctant approval had been obtained, he complained endlessly about how the agency operated. He was always starting new market-research projects, which either duplicated existing surveys or were without point. When anybody, from Max Andro down, made the mistake of questioning Harry Burkett, he inundated him with such a relentless flood of jargon that he was happy to move his numbed attention out of range.
C. C. Hollis, who was in charge of the Andro account, considered it the dreariest one he’d ever handled; but he was a careful man and not about to endanger the account by confiding his problems to a slip of a girl who had a genius for asking penetrating questions. Nevertheless, it was pleasant to take such a handsome child to lunch and explain the hearty, smiling jungle of the agency world and see the quick comprehension in her eyes.
On their third luncheon, the handsome child smiled at him and said, “I lied when I told you Harry Burkett sent me to you to talk about the Andro account.”
“What?”
“I’ve been phoning in sick and then coming to town to talk to you, Mr. Hollis. Harry Burkett would fracture all his gaskets if he knew about it. I know he has an appointment with you tomorrow, so I’ve run out of time, haven’t I?”
“Molly, you’re putting me in a dreadful situa—”
“Oh, it’s going to get much much worse, Mr. Hollis. Because I’m going to go to Mr. Andro, and I’m going to lie a little bit more. I’m going to tell him about these lunches, and I’m going to report to him how you’ve confided in me and told me Harry Burkett is a fool and a terrible handicap to the proper servicing of the Andro account.”
“I’ll deny that!”
“What good will that do? Harry is so insecure he’ll be forced to yank the account — even if Max believes you instead of me. And if Max believes me, and you don’t back me up, he’ll get rid of Harry anyway, and then where will you be? I guess all you can do is tell me the truth, so I won’t have to lie to Max Andro.”
Mr. C. C. Hollis stared at her. “You look so gentle, Molly!”
“I guess I am. But I get impatient, sort of.”
“May I never be the target of your gentle impatience, child.” He downed the dregs of his Martini and then began to talk. “We finally gave up trying to carry our message to Max Andro, and we accepted Harry Burkett as a thorn we would have to get used to, a penalty that goes with the Andro account. He is a meddler, a whine, a scold, a pretentious idiot. Knowing he will botch everything we do, just to make himself look important, we have become ever more pedestrian in our approach to Andro. At the moment, you people are not getting full value for your advertising dollar. We welcome and encourage constructive client participation in our thinking, but we deplore the untutored meddlers who soften the impact and image we try to achieve.” He smiled. “In fact, my dear, your boss is such a notorious nincompoop that around our shop whenever some other client tries to gut a good program for trivial reasons, we call that act Burketteering.”