Life — October 7, 1920 — page 11: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ou've t you h the Man Man sand iddle- n for 1 gets ; Man “Dm rtisaa led at somes 1e fol ck for ood, LIFE HOTEL PENNSYLVANIA Opposite Pennsylvania Qerminal New Yo hk Eleven Out of 19,000 is ‘Too Many Standing in the lobby of the Pennsylvania the other evening, watch- ing people, I got a new sensation. The mail-clerk had just been talking to me; and I noticed in his hand a little report-form which had at the bottom the figures 19,409. That was the mail and telegrams which one week had brought to the Pennsylvania’s mail-desk for distribution! Now of all those people in the lobby (maybe you were among them), there probably weren’t three who had ever thought, in any such terms as that, of the complex hotel-machine they were using. But it impressed me that there might be many of them who would find a moment's interest in getting such a behind-the-scenes glimpse of detail in the hotel’s daily routine. And the rea- son it occurred to me, I imagine, is because we frequently find (in both the Pennsylvania and the Statler hotels) that the guest who has the best general idea of a hotel’s problems is, some- how, the guest who always seems to “get the best service.” When you think of those 19,000 letters, most of them coming in during the busy eight hours of each twenty- four or something like 300 an hour— every one of them important to some- body who is making that hotel his temporary home, you may get a new idea of how an illegible signature on our guest-register can complicate the difficulty of giving good mail-service. Of course we check every signature, with the writer, as soon as it’s written —we do scores of things to prevent the little mistakes which make big troubles. But if we could just get across to our guest an inkling of how service might be affected by the legi- bility of his signature, or by the way his order is given, we could almost promise to keep everybody happy all the time. Yes, and the mail-clerk’s report of that week’s work was that he had had eleven complaints about mail- service. Eleven—and 19,409 pieces of mail! Hotel Pennsylvania, with its 2200 Associated with it are the four baths, circulating icewater and other rooms, 2200 baths, is the largest Hotels Statler in Buffalo, Cleveland, unusual conveniences in every room. hotel in the world—buile and oper. Detroit and St. Louis; and each of An entire block of ground in Buffalo ated for discriminating travelers who these five hotels makes reservations has just been pi , for a new want the best there is. for all the others. All have private Hotel Statler. comicbooks.com