GIRL FOR OFFICE.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2732, 14 July 1925, Page 7

GIRL FOR OFFICE.

ASKED TO BE A MODEL. The need for care on the part of girls in the selection of tlieir employers, especially when they are opening the negotiations In the dark, has been demonstrated to a number of Auckland girls within the past week or two. An advertisement inviting applications from young ladies for work in a small office took quite a number of girls to an office in a suite of chambers in the city. “Nd previous experience necessary, state age and salary expected,” ran the advertisement, and the applicants had to write to a certain address in the first 'place. One of the young ladies who applied made a point of narrating her adventure to a "Star” reporter. In answer to her application, she said, she received a note to call at a certain office between 5.30 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. She went there accompanied by her sister, who waited outside the door. The would-be employer remarked at the outset on the fact that there wa3 someone outside the door, and, when informed that it was the applicant’s sister, asked that she be sent away, as there would be no need for her to stay. ’ After preliminaries, he mentioned that he was something of an artist, and the girl, if he took her on for office work, could possibly earn extra money by posing for him, should she be of suitable proportions for a model. Talk in this strain ended in a request that she should go behind a small partition that was in the office, and have her measurements taken. The girl promptly terminated the interview and joined her sister without waiting to comply with what appeared to bo the conditions necessary for the job. If she had had "no previous .experience,” she concluded, she was luite satisfied with the present experience.

In retailing this for public information, she mentioned that the advertisement appeared quite ordinary and mnocuous, requiring “a young lady for a small office,” and though it was the same as dozens of other quite genuine advertisements of the kind, she Was absolutely convinced that both the advertisement and the office were used to mask the operations of a man with a nasty mind. Hor that reason she advised all girls who replied to advertisements of the sort never to make their personal application unaccompanied by some parent or friend.

Investigations were made by a “star” reporter at the address givep, and he found much that corroborated the girl’s statement. The immediate neighbour of the tenant complained about had noticed that the girl in the office there changed very frequently. He had also, now that the matter was mentioned, observed on one occasion recently, that several girls wore on the landing outside the office, and apparently going in singly—this at a time after usual office hours, when he had been detained, and the place might reasonably have been expected to be vacated by the tenants. Ho had heard a rumour that the man in question was addicted to art in some form or other, though that had no apparent connection with the nature of the business he was supposed to be carrying on regularly. Another tenant, on a lower floor, had had reason to bo more observant, for a complaint by a girl employed some time ago In the typiste. In consequence he had taken notice of what was going on, and had overheard protests against familiarity, and had only just had repeated to him by a girl he knew practically, the same story of the man above wanting her to pose for him. That girl, however, happened to bo of an unusually vigorous and self-confident type, and and had answered his request to display her charms by turning on him and demanding first that he should show what sort of model he was, and then smacking his face. "I assure you,” added the informant, “ that the warnings about this sort of thing are quite well founded, and it is sound advice for girl applicants for places in offices to be accompanied by a friend when the first call is requested after hours. As a matter of fact, I have reason to believe from rumours I have heard, that there is at least one other office in town which is not above suspicion.”