Betty June Smith had been with the company ten years when Operations inherited her.  Betty June was generally disliked by all and shuffled from department to department because President Rufrock had made clear that she was not going to be fired.  She was now 65, and firing her would have caused all sorts of legal brou-ha-has and no manager wanted to disobey Blaine Rufrock AND the EEOC in one bad managerial swoop. 

Plain, she was, Betty June Smith.  Small, perhaps by shrinkage, no more than 5’2” and 100 pounds soaking wet, with dark black hair that defied her age although pinpricks of gray peeped through the massively curly head of hair, one of the few robust features of this otherwise plain-jane.  Or plain Betty June, she was.  With her slight slump to the shoulders, her gray and wrinkled skin, her cheerless pewter face. 

Most maddening, said her officemates in hoarse whispers, was her tendency to overtalk everything.  Nothing was simple for Betty June; why use 25 concise words when 25 paragraphs would do nicely.  It didn’t matter whether anyone else was listening, on she droned, explaining in excruciating detail the script of her last telephone call or exactly, precisely how to cross-reference and archive a file. 

She had two jobs, this Betty June Smith:  to file all of the reports and correspondence and other documents for the department, and to process the change in ownership when stockholders bought, sold, or transferred their preferred stock.  That was all.  Two jobs.  Oh — and perhaps a third job — correcting all of her myriad of errors. For all of her dedication to precision, Betty June became easily muddled. 

To keep her bearings, Betty June constantly chattered while she reorganized the papers on her desk from one neat stack into another, never stopping her work to talk; never stopping her talk to work.  The paper towers on her desk were exceedingly tidy, but never too tidy for Betty June, and she spent countless hours re-aligning each document, each tiny sheet with her long thin fingertips arced downward, patting and prodding. 

She was equally fastidious when receiving a telephone call.  First she would put the caller on hold.  Then she would take her note pad from the middle right-hand drawer.  A pen from the center drawer, burgeoning with writing instruments, rubber bands, post-its and sundry other jots.  She would adjust the half-rimmed glasses on her tiny nose and slowly lift the receiver, intoning “how may I help you” in her tinny voice. 

The problem was:  Betty June didn’t understand a word the client said.  On the day that Betty June transferred all of Blaine Rufrock’s company stock to the former Mrs. Rufrock, she found she had more than enough time to finish tatting lace collars for her nieces, rows and rows of double stitches forming tidy precise picots that sustained life in her new home:  the one-bedroom apartment of her slovenly middle-aged daughter.