 The Boss makes an attempt to reason with Bartleby and to learn something about him; from a picture of a woman the Boss finds in Bartleby's desk, it's implied he had a spouse who either left him or passed away.The Boss also realizes he and the other employees have started using the word "prefer" in their vocabularies.Bartleby soon refuses to do any more filing, now doing nothing at all and claiming that he has "given up working", so the Boss fires Bartleby and gives him until Friday night to leave the office.