When I started working for Duncan and Todd the whole lot of the office duties were done by a wifie who worked in the Peterhead branch called Jean.
If you wanted your wages a few days early ( and I often did) you had to be nice to Jean.
A few years later ( and a fair amount of new branches) a wee upstairs office appeared with a wifie called Elma in it.
Elma ran the whole show.
Not as good as Jean on the early wages front but I won't hold that against her.
Then we moved to bigger premises and purchased an office staff making machine.
Well I remember the move but I don't remember buying the machine, maybe it was there already when we moved in.
Office staff spawned more office staff until they were whining about lack of space and took over the whole building.
The thing is that
1/ No chance at all of early wages
2/ All of them put together didn't do as much work in a day as Elma.
They were good at birthday cakes and balloons though.