useful if she
is kept busy behind the lines, but, placed out where she is a buffer
between the house and the outside world, she is a positive affliction.
She may be pleasant enough, but the caller who comes for information and
can get nothing but a smile will go away feeling about as cheerful as if
he had stuck his hand into a jar of honey when he was a mile or so away
from soap, water, and towel.

A litter of office boys sprawling untidily over the desks and chairs in
the reception room is as bad, and a snappy young lady of the "Now see
here, kid" variety is worse.

The position is not an easy one, especially in places where there is a
constant influx of miscellaneous callers, and it is hardly fair to ask a
young girl to fill it. In England they use elderly men and in a number
of offices over here, too. Their age and manner automatically protect
them (and incidentally their firms) from many undesirables that a boy or
girl in the same position would have considerable difficulty in
handling. And they lend the place an air of dignity and reserve quite
impossible with a youngster.

In some offices, especially in those where large amounts of money are
stored or handled, there are door men in uniform and often plain clothes
huskies near the entrances to protect the people (and the money) on the
inside from cranks and crooks and criminals. In others, a physician's
office, for instance, or any small office where the people who are
likely to come are of the gentler sort, a young girl with a pleasing
manner will do just as well as and perhaps better than any one else. In
big companies where there are many departments, it is customary to
maintain a regular bureau of information to which the caller who is not
sure whom or what he wants is first directed, but the majority of
businesses have only one person who is delegated to receive the people
who come and either direct them to the person they want to see or turn
them aside.

Most of them must be turned aside. If the stage managers in New York
interviewed all the girls who want to see them, they would have no time
left for anything else, and the same thing is true of nearly every man
who is prominent in business or in some other way. (Charlie Chaplin
received 73,000 letters during the first three days he was in England.
Suppose he had personally read each of them!) Hundreds of people must be
turned away, but every person who approaches a firm either to get
something from it