Miss Burton was hired as a clinic aide at a family planning clinic. She was a secondary school graduate and had attended a workshop on primary health care. The clinic supervisor told Miss Burton that her duties consisted of taking the medical histories of new clinic clients, updating the histories of returning clients, counseling clients about contraceptive methods, and giving introductory talks on family planning in the waiting room. She was also given the weekly duty of taking the records of that week's new family planning acceptors and entering the following information into the clinic's statistical system: the age and number of children of the new clients, their contraceptive method, whether they had ever switched methods, and how long they had been family planning acceptors.
After Miss Burton had been working at the clinic for three months, the employee who had been in charge of the contraceptive supplies left, and because Miss Burton was doing such a careful and thorough job with the family planning statistics, the clinic supervisor put her in charge of the contraceptive supply records and reordering. It took Miss Burton several months to learn to calculate when to reorder and how long supplies would take to arrive, but she was soon carrying out this duty more efficiently than the previous employee had, although it sometimes meant that she had to work late.
The clinic supervisor was so impressed with the capable way in which Miss Burton carried out new tasks that when the clinic's outreach worker had a family emergency just before she was due to give a talk to a community group, the supervisor sent Miss Burton to replace her. Due to her experience at giving talks at the clinic, Miss Burton was an effective speaker, and was able to answer the audience's questions clearly and accurately. When the outreach worker became pregnant soon afterwards, the clinic supervisor asked Miss Burton to make more and more of these public presentations.
Miss Burton enjoyed this work, although each presentation required some preparatory work which often meant she had to work late. She became increasingly upset that she was taking on additional responsibilities and putting in more and more hours of work without any increase in salary.
One afternoon several months later, Miss Burton was sitting at her desk reviewing the contraceptive supply records in the few minutes she had between seeing patients, when the Clinic Director hurried over. "I have to make a presentation this evening to a very important donor," she said. "I need a chart with the up-to-date statistics on our acceptors, and I need you to include on the chart all the subject areas you've been collecting information on. It must be ready by 6:00. This is vitally important."
Miss Burton looked up at her, distressed. "But I have a full afternoon of clients, and because of all these community presentations and the contraceptive supplies, I haven't been able to work on the statistics for two months. They're not at all ready and will take a long time to do."
"But the statistics are your job!" the Clinic Director said furiously. "You are supposed to do them! What's wrong with you?"
"But I thought the supplies were a priority, and the patients, and the presentations," Miss Burton said meekly, intimidated by the Clinic Director's glare.