Five men walk around central Dublin wearing giant boards, each displaying one letter of “H-E-L-Y-S.” They are advertisers working for Hely’s stationery shop, where Leopold Bloom used to work. Bloom gets frustrated whenever he sees them, since he thought his own advertising proposals for Hely were far superior. For instance, he wanted to hire attractive young women to ride around Dublin in a cart with a “Hely’s” sign, but Hely rejected this idea.