An important part of silent comedies was misunderstandings and all the confusion it caused among the characters, which included mistaken conclusions against the good morals of a couple. This is exactly what happened in this film.
The film started in what looked like a department store, both the place and people look sophisticated. Al St. John was smoking besides a well-dressed elderly man who is smoking a pipe, they both worked together in the same office. At that moment, a woman arrived.
Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle crossed the street, entered a place, had difficulties with a revolving door. Roscoe got to solve his problems with the door, a crook arrived at the store and stole the handbag of a lady. The thief bumped into the revolving door and fell and as Fatty was still nearby, the crowd thought he had caught the thief. The lady gave some money to Fatty out of gratitude.
Right afterwards Fatty applied for a job as a janitor. As one of intertitles said, a broker, Mr. I. Steele, has a client who “will arrive about noon with certified check for $ 10.000 to close a deal” and the option expires at three o’clock. The broker left the office and requested a note to be delivered for his wife, letting her know about the upcoming business deal.
Meanwhile, Fatty was carrying out his duties in the most clumsy way possible, even causing accidents involving other passerby people and flirting with beautiful women around him. This scene was an opportunity for a plenty of people falling on their butts in full splendor.
While Fatty was causing all that mess downstairs, a woman caught the elevator and entered the broker’s office. It was his wife. She was greeted by her husbands’ co-workers, received the note and read that he wanted her to entertain his client until he arrived. The husband also wrote in the note that his client was a rather eccentric man.
Fatty was asked by a couple to watch their beauty parlor until they arrived back. However, some seconds later a woman came and asked Fatty to keep his eyes on the candy shop. A short time after the woman left, it arrived a client to the barber and, for any weird reason, Fatty did the job on the poor man’s beard. To add insult to injury, Fatty left the gentleman alone in the barber while he was servicing a female client in the candy shop. Eventually, the barber’s client was “sore, but satisfied” despite the complete inability of Fatty to work as a barber.
Subsequently, Fatty caught the elevator and entered the broker’s office. Fatty noticed there was another guy in the elevator, but kept going. The broker’s wife had mistaken Fatty as her husband’s client and invited him to have lunch with her at the oriental café. Fatty gladly accepted the proposal, unaware of the chaos that would happen soon. The café was lavishly decorated and unfortunately Fatty lacked enough social skills to attend this type of sophisticated place.
The broker finally returned to his office and was told by Al St. John that his wife “went out with the janitor”. The broker was furious and immediately took a revolver that he kept in his drawer. He was determined to take revenge and while his wife and the janitor were having fun in the café watching a rather over the top show, the husband arrived to wash his honor with blood. He tried to shoot Fatty, but the janitor got to run away in fear.
In the middle of all this chaos, the real client arrived at the office and was received by the broker’s co-workers. The real client claimed that the papers must be signed by three o’clock otherwise the deal would expire. And he could not wait much longer because it was actually almost three’ o’clock.
It looked like the employees got to tell the broker about the misunderstanding and the documents were signed on time. Yes “it looked like” because it seems there are some scenes missing in the end and the last scene the audiences see is Al St. John and his colleagues running on the street and then the film abruptly ended. It is not clear if the end of this film is lost or if it is just some printings that don’t show the entire film, though.
In addition to being a funny comedy to this day, this film also has interesting historical value because it enables modern-day audiences to catch a glimpse of 1910s buildings, offices, elevators, typewriters, etc. and compare with how those items look like nowadays. It is like traveling in a time machine and a genuine one-of-a-kind experience.
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