Human Performance

"Everything seemed more formal, and at the same time more personal, then. There were no escalators in the stores in the early 30s (at least none in the tri-cities), so there were only elevators (and, of course, stairs). But the elevators themselves were not self-service. There was always a person - almost always a woman, I think - who was the "elevator operator. The people in the elevator would call out the number of the floor they wanted - "five, please", "seven please", etc. And in the operator would call out the number of each floor as it was reached, and also run through a list of the departments included on that floor: "Seven! Women's ready - to - wear, hats, girl's dresses - watch your step!" The "watch your step" would be because the operator wouldn't always be able to line the floor of the elevator up exactly with the floor of the building. Sometimes the operator would jiggle the elevator up and down until she got a pretty good alignment. That's an example of what I mean by things being more personal. In a way, things were taken more seriously then because more reliance was place on actual human performance instead of on machines."

-Dave's Dad