Who Made Yellow Roses Yellow? is a short story by the novelist John Updike, published in his collection The Same Door in 1959.
Plot summary
As the story begins, Fred Platt, the main character, is about to place a telephone call to a college friend he hasn't seen in years. Platt, as the opening sentence indicates, comes from 'old money' -- he is three generations removed from its acquisition. He wants to acquire a job without the contaminating hand of his father's connections.
Accordingly, he calls his old friend Clayton Thomas. Clayton is now an executive in the advertising wing of a large chemical company, hence the story's title. The drama in the story consists of Fred's horror at Clayton's gauche, new-money ways, a horror that he with some effort suppresses in the interest of asking Clayton for work.
Some nice touches arise from Fred's brief conversations with each of the two secretaries through whom his phone call must pass before he can talk to Clayton. For example, the second secretary asks, "About what was it you wished to speak to him?" and one senses an earnest and newly educated woman's effort to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition. Fred, when he does finally reach Clayton, asks (in counterpoint), "Who are all these girls you live in the midst of?"