Life, 1921-07-21 · page 8 of 34
Life — July 21, 1921 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two satirical cartoons about hotel behavior and a prose article on guest conduct. **Top cartoon**: Titled "Bachelor Uncle (re-introduced to the heir of the house—a year seven months)," depicts an older gentleman startled by how much a child has aged during his absence, exclaiming "Bless my soul! How she has aged!" **Bottom cartoon**: "Plumber's Devil" shows a young boy in an elevator shaft, with dialogue: "Y'ain't sick, are ye?" / "Naw! It ain't that—I forgot me tools!" The accompanying article humorously critiques modern hotel guests' inconsiderate behavior: pestering staff for room requests, attempting to manipulate elevator schedules, and generally failing to respect hotel employees. The satire suggests guests should learn their proper place and cooperate with management for efficient hotel operations.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
wb J é ZO) 0, prpruc4 > a VV JI SF mal jae Bachelor Uncle (re-introduced to the heir of the house--ctat seven months): Bless my soul! How she has aged! Plumber’s Devil: Y’aint sick, are ye? Plumber: Naw! It ain’t that—I for- got t’ forgit me tools! a number and not a banker and decides not to risk it. Of the guests in a given hotel, if one is a banker and another a race-track gam- bler, for hotel purposes they are both numbers. This insures that the banker will be treated exactly as though he were a race-track gambler. Another annoying characteristic of guests in hotels is that they will try to upset the schedule upon which the eleva- tors are run by pressing buttons and shouting, “Going up,” or, “Going Down,” as the case may be. To be sure, they don’t often succeed, but the intent is there nevertheless. ‘Of what use is it for a hotel management to spend months and months working out a plan whereby all the twelve elevators are simultaneously either at the roof or at the basement, when guests of the hotel constantly make abortive attempts to stop the elevators en route? Finally, guests do not put themselves in the place of hotel employees. They mistake for discourtesy in an employee what is merely a nervous reaction to the duties of his employment. Suppose, for instance, you were a room clerk in a thou- sand-room hotel, and morning, noon and night people were asking you for rooms, rooms—nothing but rooms. Or suppose you were a mail clerk, and day after day, year after year, everyone who came to your window pestered you for letters or telegrams? Just when you had all your rooms nicely vacant, or just when you had all your letters nicely assorted, along comes a guest and asks for a room or a letter, as the case may be, and gums everything up. Impossible for a room clerk or a mail clerk to ignore such a person. The best thing is to squelch him at once by a few cutting words or a pronounced brusque- ness of manner. Guests must be taught their place in the scheme of a modern hotel. They must co-operate with the management by practicing that self-effacement -for guests which is so essential to the scientific man- agement of a modern hotel. In short, one cannot run a modern hotel and be bothered by guests too. comicbooks.com