Taken from “Surely You're Joking, Mr.
Feynman!” Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Phillips Feynman as told to Ralph Leighton edited by
Edward Hutchings
I
must have been seventeen or eighteen when I worked one summer in a hotel run by
my aunt. I don’t know how much I got—twenty-two dollars a month, I think—and I
alternated eleven hours one day and thirteen the next as a desk clerk or as a
busboy in the restaurant. And during the afternoon, when you were desk clerk,
you had to bring milk up to Mrs. D—, an invalid woman who never gave us a tip.
That’s the way the world was: You worked long hours and got nothing for it,
every day.
This
was a resort hotel, by the beach, on the outskirts of New York City. The
husbands would go to work in the city and leave the wives behind to play cards,
so you would always have to get the bridge tables out. Then at night the guys
would play poker, so you’d get the tables ready for them—clean out the ashtrays
and so on. I was always up until late at night, like two o’clock, so it really
was thirteen and eleven hours a day.
There
were certain things I didn’t like, such as tipping. I thought we should be paid
more, and not have to have any tips. But when I proposed that to the boss, I
got nothing but laughter. She told everybody, “Richard doesn’t want his tips,
hee, hee, hee; he doesn’t want his tips, ha, ha, ha.” The world is full of this
kind of dumb smart-alec who doesn’t understand anything.
Anyway,
at one stage there was a group of men who, when they’d come back from working
in the city, would right away want ice for their drinks. Now the other guy
working with me had really been a desk clerk. He was older than I was, and a
lot more professional. One time he said to me, “Listen, we’re always bringing
ice up to that guy Ungar and he never gives us a tip—not even ten cents. Next
time, when they ask for ice, just don’t do a damn thing. Then they’ll call you
back, and when they call you back, you say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot. We’re all
forgetful sometimes.’”
So
I did it, and Ungar gave me fifteen cents! But now, when I think back on it, I
realize that the other desk clerk, the professional, had really known what to
do—tell the other
guy to take the risk of getting into trouble. He put me to the job of training
this fella to give tips. He
never said anything; he made me
do it!
I
had to clean up tables in the dining room as a busboy. You pile all this stuff
from the tables on to a tray at the side, and when it gets high enough you
carry it into the kitchen. So you get a new tray, right? You should do it in two
steps—take the old tray away, and put in a new one—but I thought, “I’m going to
do it in one step.” So I tried to slide the new tray under, and pull the old
tray out at the same time, and it slipped—BANG! All the stuff went on the
floor. And then, naturally, the question was, “What were you doing? How did it
fall?” Well, how could I explain that I was trying to invent a new way to
handle trays?
Among
the desserts there was some kind of coffee cake that came out very pretty on a
doily, on a little plate. But if you would go in the back you’d see a man
called the pantry man. His problem was to get the stuff ready for desserts. Now
this man must have been a miner, or something—heavy built, with very stubby,
rounded, thick fingers. He’d take this stack of doilies, which are manufactured
by some sort of stamping process, all stuck together, and he’d take these
stubby fingers and try to separate the doilies to put them on the plates. I
always heard him say, “Damn deez doilies!” while he was doing this, and I
remember thinking, “What a contrast—the person sitting at the table gets this
nice cake on a doilied plate, while the pantry man back there with the stubby
thumbs is saying, ‘Damn deez doilies!’” So that was the difference between the
real world and what it looked like.
My
first day on the job the pantry lady explained that she usually made a ham
sandwich, or something, for the guy who was on the late shift. I said that I
liked desserts, so if there was a dessert left over from supper, I’d like that.
The next night I was on the late shift till 2:00 A.M. with these guys playing
poker. I was sitting around with nothing to do, getting bored, when suddenly I
remembered there was a dessert to eat. I went over to the icebox and opened it
up, and there she’d left six
desserts! There was a chocolate pudding, a piece of cake, some peach slices,
some rice pudding, some jello—there was everything! So I sat there and ate the
six desserts—it was sensational!
The
next day she said to me, “I left a dessert for you.
“It
was wonderful,” I said, “absolutely wonderful!”
“But
I left you six desserts because I didn’t know which one you liked the best.”
So
from that time on she left six desserts. They weren’t always different, but
there were always six desserts.
One
time when I was desk clerk a girl left a book by the telephone at the desk
while she went to eat dinner, so I looked at. it. It was The Life of Leonardo, and
I couldn’t resist: The girl let me borrow it and I read the whole thing.
I
slept in a little room in the back of the hotel, and there was some stew about
turning out the lights when you leave your room, which I couldn’t ever remember
to do. Inspired by the Leonardo book, I made this gadget which consisted of a
system of strings and weights—Coke bottles full of water—that would operate
when I’d open the door, lighting the pull-chain light inside. You open the
door, and things would go, and light the light; then you close the door behind
you, and the light would go out. But my real
accomplishment came later.
I
used to cut vegetables in the kitchen. String beans had to be cut into one-inch
pieces. The way you were supposed to do it was: You hold two beans in one hand,
the knife in the other, and you press the knife against the beans and your
thumb, almost cutting yourself. It was a slow process. So I put my mind to it,
and I got a pretty good idea. I sat down at the wooden table outside the
kitchen, put a bowl in my lap, and stuck a very sharp knife into the table at a
forty-five-degree angle away from me. Then I put a pile of the string beans on each
side, and I’d pick out a bean, one in each hand, and bring it towards me with
enough speed that it would slice, and the pieces would slide into the bowl that
was in my lap.
So
I’m slicing beans one after the other—chig,
chig, chig, chig, chig–and everybody’s giving me the beans, and I’m
going like sixty when the boss comes by and says, “What are you doing?”
I
say, “Look at the way I have of cutting beans!”—and just at that moment I put a
finger through instead of a bean. Blood came out and went on the beans, and
there was a big excitement: “Look at how many beans you spoiled! What a stupid
way to do things!” and so on. So I was never able to make any improvement,
which would have been easy—with a guard, or something—but no, there was no
chance for improvement.
I
had another invention, which had a similar difficulty. We had to slice potatoes
after they’d been cooked, for some kind of potato salad. They were sticky and
wet, and difficult to handle. I thought of a whole lot of knives, parallel in a
rack, coming down and slicing the whole thing. I thought about this a long
time, and finally I got the idea of wires in a rack,
So
I went to the five-and-ten to buy some knives or wires, and saw exactly the
gadget I wanted: it was for slicing eggs. The next time the potatoes came out I
got my little egg-slicer out and sliced all the potatoes in no time, and sent
them back to the chef. The chef was a German, a great big guy who was King of
the Kitchen, and he came storming out, blood vessels sticking out of his neck,
livid red. “What’s the matter with the potatoes?” he says. “They’re not
sliced!”
I
had them sliced, but they were all stuck together. He says, “How can I separate
them?”
“Stick
‘em in water,” I suggest.
“IN
WATER? EAGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”
Another
time I had a really
good idea. When I was desk clerk I had to answer the telephone. When a call
came in, something buzzed, and a flap came down on the switchboard so you could
tell which line it was. Sometimes, when I was helping the women with the bridge
tables or sitting on the front porch in the middle of the afternoon (when there
were very few calls), I’d be some distance from the switchboard when suddenly
it would go. I’d come running to catch it, but the way the desk was made, in
order to get to the switchboard you had to go quite a distance further down,
then around, in behind, and then back up to see where the call was coming
from—it took extra time.
So
I got a good idea. I tied threads to the flaps on the switchboard, and strung
them over the top of the desk and then down, and at the end of each thread I
tied a little piece of paper. Then I put the telephone talking piece up on top
of the desk, so I could reach it from the front. Now, when a call came, I could
tell which flap was down by which piece of paper was up, so I could answer the
phone appropriately, from the front, to save time. Of course I still had to go
around back to switch it in, but at least I was answering it. I’d say, “Just a
moment,” and then go around to switch it in.
I
thought that was perfect, but the boss came by one day, and she wanted to
answer the phone, and she couldn’t figure it out—too complicated. “What are all
these papers doing? Why is the telephone on this side? Why don’t you … raaaaaaaa!”
I
tried to explain—it was my own aunt—that there was no reason not to do that, but you
can’t say that to anybody who’s smart,
who runs a hotel!
I learned there that innovation is a very difficult thing in the real world.