Yes, Dom, I agree with you that Mrs. Stoddard was likely very generous and fair with her employees, thus the great loyalty on the part of the Collins Cannery employees.
Apparently, Elizabeth inherited her generosity and thoughtfulness from her paternal grandfather, Edward. Thankfully, Elizabeth did not inherit any traits from her grandaunt, Judith Collins-Trask, a miserly and frustrated woman, who even made the parsimonious Sarah Collins seem like the late philanthropist Joan Kroc by comparison.
As much as Mrs. Stoddard was respected and even beloved by her employees, I wonder how the Bill Malloys, the Ezra Aherns, the Joe Haskells and the rest thought of her younger brother and new company COO, Roger Collins? I mean, the haughty and apparently Ivy League-educated Roger hardly came off as a “regular guy,” who knew how (or even cared) to relate to the blue collar employees working underneath him.
While most of the Collins Cannery employees probably wore L.L. Bean jeans and flannel shirts to work, Roger probably only bought his fine-tailored suits from the Brooks Brothers store in either Portland or Boston. (No off of the rack suits from Brewster’s Department Store for a man with such “discriminating” tastes as Roger Collins!)
And, no doubt, the practical, down-to-earth residents of Collinsport likely thought that the forty-something Roger Collins looked absolutely ridiculous, tooling around town in a Mustang with racing stripes. Heck, Collins Cannery fishing fleet manager Bill Malloy was still driving around in his 1958 Chevrolet Impala, which was losing its original paint job, due to the cold and corrosive Maine sea air.
Yes, Roger probably longed for the weekend, when he could drive to Bar Harbor and hobnob with the really “important” people and escape the plebeians of Collinsport, Maine.