Rita Stone (Valerie Harper) is a divorcée and 19-year veteran of a secretarial pool at the executive office of a package-design company in New York City. She is outspoken and mainly the glue that holds things together at the company, seeing that everything gets done on time, mediating disputes, and trying to be a good listener to both job-related and personal problems. While Rita is responsible for the company's inept CEO, Frank (Dakin Matthews), she also manages three other secretaries: Beth (Debra Jo Rupp), a flustered mother of four who works for the company's only female executive, Natalie (Lisa Darr); Mae (Andrea Abbate), a free-spirited, thrice-divorced former temp who works for the firm's temperamental artist (Gary Dourdan); and Deborah (Kristin Dattilo-Hayward), a naive MBA student who works for a sleazy salesman (Kevin Conroy).