Life, 1922-07-06 · page 35 of 36
Life — July 6, 1922 — page 35: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is primarily **advertising**, not political satire. E.M. Statler uses the page to promote his hotel chain and publicize his management philosophy regarding customer service. The content shows a photograph of a hotel room clerk at a desk and presents Statler's written instructions to his staff. The "message" is straightforward business strategy: Statler emphasizes that guests form their first impression at the front desk, so room clerks must be courteous, attentive, and genuinely interested in guests' needs—never bored, superior, or grudging. Statler presents this as enlightened labor management, claiming he will ensure customers "meet no other kind" of clerk in his hotels. While this reads as standard hospitality advice today, in the 1920s this represented a notable public commitment to consistent service standards. The Hotel Pennsylvania advertisement below claims to be "The Largest Hotel in the World," establishing competitive positioning in the luxury hotel market.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Hotels Statler Buffalo - Cleveland - Detroit - St. Louis A new Hotel Statler (1100 rooms, 1100 baths) is now building at Buffalo, to open early in 1923; 500 more rooms will be added later. cA Word About the Room-Clerks in the Statler-Operated Hotels By E. M. STATLER —being one of a series of ads embodying instructions to Statler employees. About nine-tenths of any traveler’s first opinion of a hotel is made at the room desk. The room-clerk’s job isn’t an easy one, as you may have observed. He has to be a diplomat and a gentleman, he has to have tact and patience and an easy-working smile—if he is to be a good room-clerk. And I am going to undertake the job of seeing that you meet no other kind in these hotels. I won’t have people, when they come to us to buy something, handled brusquely or listlessly or uninterestedly, if I can help it—and I think I can. You may be interested in seeing some of the instructions we give to our room-clerks, by way of defining what we require of those men who represent us to you: Instructions to Room-Clerks Hotel Pennsy Opp. Pennsylvania Terminal. New York, The Largest Hotel in the World “In the first place, you have to take seriously and literally every word of instruction in The Statler Service Codes. “You have to remember that you are never doing a man a fav selling him a room. I have seen room-clerks who looked bored, or superior, or patronizing—grunting acknowledgments, dictating terms, working grudging! But I want to say that nobody can do that in our hotels and stay on the job. “You won't always have just what a man asks for at just the mo- ment he asks for it, of course. Watch, particularly and especially, the way you handle people who want the kind of rooms on which you are oversold. I know, and you know, that the traveling public gets a square deal at our room desks; but it is qui —dead easy— for you to give the customer an idea that he isn’t getting a square deal. All he has to judge by, you see, is your interest in his request. Watch yourself. “If you can't meet and care for people in this spir you can’t or won't be courteous and helpful and gracious and pleasant at every step of your work—and with your fellow employ: well as with our guests—don’t try to be a room- clerk here.” P0Nav in Ivania comicbooks.com