Geoffrey Moss for The Chronicle
In James Thurber’s 1942 short story “The Catbird Seat,” the boisterous Ulgine Barrows shatters the peaceful diligence of Erwin Martin, head of the filing department at his firm. Barrows, as special adviser to the president of the firm, brays at Martin, using slang he barely understands. Apparently a Dodgers fan, she mimics Red Barber’s ball-field patter, shouting, “Are you tearing up the pea patch? Are you scraping around the bottom of the pickle barrel? Are you sitting in the catbird seat?” Martin eventually hatches a plan to turn Barrows’s ebullience against her, using words alone. He tells her he’s plotting to kill the president of the firm — suspecting their boss will find the very idea of homicidal impulses in a veteran employee outlandish if Barrows relates it to him. Generations of high schoolers have delighted in her unraveling, the climax of a revenge plot most beleaguered office workers can merely dream of.
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