Belles on Their Toes

by Frank B. Gilbreth

  It was still early when they arrived at the store, and the boys’ department was nearly deserted. A middle-aged salesman, pleased at the prospect of starting the day with such a large group of potential customers, hurried up to Mother. He was precise, plump, and wore a hearing aid, which fitted over his head earphones-fashion.

  “Hello there, fellows,” he said heartily, in a tone designed to show that he was nothing but a great big boy himself. “Well, school’s about to start, eh? I know you’re all looking forward to it.” He laughed and rumpled Bob’s head, and Bob hid behind Mother.

  “What will it be this morning?” the salesman asked Mother hopefully, “suits for all the boys?”

  “Yes, please,” said Mother, while the salesman, obviously figuring that this was his lucky day, beamed happily.

  Mother reached into her briefcase-sized pocketbook, pulled out two blueprints, the first draft of a speech she was writing, a copy of the magazine Iron Age, a shawl she was crocheting for her mother, some socks she had darned on the boat, and finally her black note book. There is never anything very efficient about Mother’s pocketbook.

  “Let’s see,” she said,” reading from Ernestine’s list, “five suits, fifteen neckties, twenty suits of underwear, twenty-five pairs of socks, twenty shirts, and five pairs of shoes.”

  “Yes, Madam,” smiled the salesman. It was a big, sincere smile, which was fortunate, because it was his last until the boys departed, and possibly his last for a matter of weeks.

  “Do they let him play that radio when he’s supposed to be working?” Dan asked Mother.

  “That’s not a radio, dear,” said Mother, who was embarrassed but believed in answering all questions from the floor. “It’s a hearing aid. So of course, it’s not polite to talk about it.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Dan, and then whispering, “What’s a hearing aid?”

  “He’s a little deaf, dear,” Mother whispered back. “So don’t say anything more about it.”

  “What did she say?” Fred and Jack whispered to Dan.

  “Deaf as a doornail,” Dan whispered back. “Don’t make him feel bad about it.”

  “If you fellows will step this way,” said the salesman, “I think we can find something.”

  “We don’t want to pay more than $17.50 for the suits,” said Bill, who had been coached by the girls. “And we want them with two pairs of knickers.”

  Fred nudged Bill and whispered: “Deaf.”

  “We don’t want to pay more than $17.50 for the suits,” Bill shouted, as loud as he could.

  “I know you don’t, Sonny,” the salesman said patiently. “I heard you. You don’t really have to shout.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Bill, glaring at Fred.

  “Look, fellows,” the man said. “It’s all right about the hearing aid. Lots of boys ask about it. I’m going to show you how it works.”

  He explained that he kept dry cell batteries in his hip pocket, and showed the boys the volume-control rheostat in the side pocket of his coat.

  “Now let’s get down to business, fellows,” he said, swinging out a rack of clothes. He turned to Mother. “We have a special sale on this group, Madam.”

  “How much?” said Bill.

  “These have been marked down from $30,” the salesman continued, ignoring Bill, “and they’re a real buy, Madam.”

  “How much?” said Bill.

  “They’re $19.50,” he admitted, glaring.

  “I’m afraid that’s too much, sir,” Bill said. “We want something cheaper.”

  “I don’t know, dear,” Mother put in. “We might look at them, and see whether you like them.”

  “We don’t like them,” Bill shook his head. “Ernestine might not object too much, but Martha would holler. She made us promise.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Mother agreed.

  “Ernestine?” asked the salesman. “Martha?”

  “Ern’s chairman of the purchasing committee, and Mart’s in charge of the budget,” Bill told him.

  “I see,” said the salesman, who obviously didn’t, but thought it best not to pursue the subject any further.

  He pulled out another rack. “These are $17,” he said. “Marked down from $25. What colors did you have in mind, Madam?”

  “I think we’ll just let the boys pick them out,” Mother smiled. “If you don’t mind, would you be good enough to start with Bill—he’s the biggest one; the blond.”

  “What color did you have in mind, young man?”

  “I don’t think the color will matter,” Bill said.

  “What kind of cloth, then?”

  “I don’t care about that, either. I want the kind that has buckles on the bottom of the knickers that will keep your stockings up.”

  The salesman looked in mute appeal at Mother, who had found a chair and was working on her crocheting.

  “That seems sensible, dear,” she said without looking up. “The legs of your last pair wouldn’t stay up at all, would they?”

  “The points on the buckle bent out of shape the first week,” Bill complained. “Worst suit I ever had.”

  Bill went through the rack, tried on three or four suits that didn’t pass the buckle test, and at last found a gray, belted model that seemed just right.

  “I like this one,” he said, turning around so Mother could see whether it fit.

  “It fits him almost exactly,” said the salesman, who was beginning to perspire a little from taking down suits and hanging them up.

  Mother felt the material. “I think it’s fine, dear. It should wear well, and it seems well made. It’s mighty handsome, too.”

  The salesman was obviously relieved.

  “Shall I have it wrapped?” he asked.

  “Not just yet,” Bill told him. “Is it all right with you, Fred?”

  Fred came over, looked at it, felt it, and studied the buckles.

  “Okay with me,” Fred agreed.

  “Does everybody have to approve it?” asked the salesman, who was becoming a little bewildered. “Are we going to have to have a vote on each suit?” he appealed to Mother.

  “Oh, no,” Mother assured him.

  “Just this little fellow here?” the salesman asked, pointing to Fred. “Is he the one who has to approve them all?”

  “Not exactly,” Mother said. “It’s just that the boys agreed Fred would have to approve Bill’s suit, Dan would have to approve Fred’s, Jack would …”

  “Yeeees,” the clerk interrupted, looking around him furtively. “Of course. I see.”

  By the time the suits had been selected, the boys’ department was beginning to take on the appearance of a firehouse dormitory. Coats, pants, and vests, many of them in positions just as the boys had wriggled out of them, were on chairs, tables, hooks, and the floor. The clothes racks were as culled and gaping as a turkey roost on Thanksgiving Day.

  The clerk, now perspiring freely, led the boys to the underwear counter, where Mother found another chair.

  “We can pay a dollar a pair,” Bill told him.

  “What color?” asked the salesman, who knew better now than to haggle over the price.

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” Bill said. “The only thing we don’t want is what Tom calls Indian drawers.”

  “Don’t be Eskimo,” Mother warned. “Eskimo” was Mother’s word for anything that was deemed evil minded. She seldom seemed to miss a reference.

  “The kind that creeps up on you,” the salesman nodded morosely. “I’m dying laughing.” He pulled out some boxes. “Let’s see, now. Less than a dollar, any color, no Indian drawers. This has been, if I may say so, a unique experience.”

  “If there’s anything I hate it’s drawers like that, don’t you, Mother?” Dan asked. “You can hardly sit still in them.”

  “I think,” smiled Mother, burying her head in her crocheting, “you’d better pay attention to what the gentleman’s showing you.”

  The underwear finally selected w
as on special sale, and was produced for inspection only after all other brands had been rejected as having Indian characteristics.

  “These are just what we want,” Bill said, when the specially priced goods were brought out from under a counter. “We’ll take twenty pairs of them, please. Mother has the sizes.”

  “Only three to a customer,” the salesman shook his head. “We lose money on every one of these we sell at that price.”

  “We certainly don’t want to hurt your business,” Bill agreed. “Since there are only six of us, I guess all we can take is eighteen pairs then.”

  The clerk, now beginning to walk as if in a trance, got the sizes from Mother and added the underwear to the growing pile of merchandise.

  “To save time,” he said, as we arrived at the shoe counter, “and to save me the trouble of showing you every shoe in the store, suppose you explain to me in detail, beforehand, just what it is you want in a shoe.”

  “The first one who says a foot,” Bill warned the other boys, “is going to get in trouble with me. I think we’re taking up too much of this man’s time.”

  “I don’t suppose,” the salesman ignored him, “that what you’d want is what everybody else gets for their boys—a high black shoe that wears well.”

  “Yes,” Bill nodded, “I think that’s just what we do want.”

  “I thought maybe you didn’t care about the color or whether it was high or low, just so long as the eyelets didn’t rust, and the laces were genuine Western cowhide.”

  “Do you have any with laces like that?” Fred asked eagerly.

  “No,” the clerk yelled, “we don’t. And I don’t know whether our eyelets rust or not.”

  Fred was subdued. “Funny store,” he whispered. “They try to sell you things they haven’t got.”

  There was a good deal of bickering, but the boys finally decided on the shoes, shirts, ties and socks.

  “I guess it’s been trying for you,” Mother told the salesman sincerely as she paid the bill. “But I think that buying is an important part of every child’s education, don’t you?”

  “What’s that?” he said, fumbling in his side pocket for the hearing aid switch. “I had it turned off. I can hear you now. I couldn’t stand to listen any more.”

  “You mean,” Mother asked, and the boys thought there was a trace of envy in her voice, “that all you have to do is turn a switch, and you can’t hear anything at all?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s wonderful what science can do,” Mother said. There was no doubt about it. It was envy.

  9. Mother’s School

  EIGHT OF US, ERNESTINE down through Jack, went back to school in Montclair. Anne rode a day coach to Ann Arbor and enrolled as a junior at the University of Michigan. She joined a sorority within a few weeks and was taken into Phi Beta Kappa that spring.

  Mother, besides supervising everything at home, got down to the job of trying to support the family.

  The financial outlook became, if anything, even worse than Mother had expected. The big firms declined to renew their motion study contracts. Various reasons were offered. They boiled down to the belief that, while Mother might know the theory of motion study, no woman could handle the technical details of the job or command the respect and cooperation of shop foremen and workers.

  The Motion Study Course, which Mother had planned while in Europe, seemed the only remaining chance. Even if industries thought she wasn’t able to put time-saving theories into practice in their plants, perhaps they’d send their own engineers or other personnel to her to learn the theories, and then apply them themselves.

  She mailed prospectuses to a dozen former clients and other firms that had shown an interest in motion study in the past. The course was to be held at our home in Montclair, where Dad and Mother had their offices and laboratory.

  The tuition was stiff. Mother figured that if less than six firms sent representatives, she’d have to call off the whole idea. That meant we’d move to California, or accept some of the kind offers of family friends.

  If there were as many as six, there still would be a chance that the family could stay together. If there were more than six, the family could stay together and there would be enough money for Ernestine to start college in the fall.

  Mother wouldn’t be budged on that business of sending all of us to college. When anyone tried to tell her it wasn’t feasible, she jutted out her chin.

  Some parents find the task of getting even one child ready for school in the morning to be an exhausting one. Mother got eight ready, saw that the beds were made and the house cleaned, supervised Ernestine’s menus and Martha’s budget program, kept an eye on Bob and Jane, mended and sewed on buttons, wrote Anne every day, and still found time to read aloud to us at night, to help us with our homework, and to go with us to Sunday school.

  And she worked ten hours every day in the office and laboratory.

  At night Mother was slow and fumbling, and there were circles under her eyes. But in the mornings her weariness was gone, and she was at her best.

  Between six and seven o’clock in the mornings, she’d help the younger children make their beds and straighten up their rooms, while listening to poems, spelling words, or multiplication tables they had been assigned to memorize for school.

  At seven she waked the older ones, and then helped them with their beds and assignments. We left for school a few minutes after eight, and then Mother turned Bob and Jane over to Tom, and went into her office. The stenographic staff, which had been reduced to one, arrived at nine, and Mother wanted to be sure Miss Butler had enough to keep her busy.

  Once an hour, Mother would come out to check on Bob and Jane. Ernestine and Martha, both of whom had been taught to type by Dad, took turns coming home directly from school in the afternoons and helping out in the office.

  Sometimes, in spite of rules about interrupting Mother, there were more children in the office than out of it. Miss Butler used to say that she should have studied at a nursery school, instead of at a business college.

  None of us was supposed to enter the office without knocking, and only then when the business was urgent. We knocked, all right, but our ideas of urgent business sometimes conflicted with Mother’s.

  “Do you think,” Lillian would ask, after beating a loud tattoo on the door, “that I should wear the pink or the yellow dress to Boodle’s birthday party?”

  The worst of it was that such a question would capture Mother’s interest, and she’d forget all about what she was doing.

  “The yellow one is my favorite,” Mother would say. “I think those pleats on the side are precious, don’t you?”

  “Do you think it’s long enough?”

  “It is getting a little short,” Mother would agree. “I’ll let the hem down after supper. How old is Boodle, anyway? It seems to me she had a birthday …”

  Suddenly it would dawn on her that she was being interrupted. “We’ll talk about it at supper, dear,” she’d say firmly. “I know it’s important, and I won’t forget it. But I’m very busy right now.”

  She’d make a note on her desk pad about Lillian’s dress, and she wouldn’t forget it.

  Finally Mother devised an interruptions chart, which she hung on the wall behind her office desk. When one of us came into the office with a problem that wasn’t vital, she’d tell the offender:

  “I wonder if you’d mind making a check by your name on the interruptions chart? I’m trying to keep track of them, so we can see if we can cut them down.”

  The interrupter would shamefacedly make his mark, while Miss Butler grinned into her typewriter.

  “Thank you, dear,” Mother would say, without a trace of a smile. “How many is that for you so far this week?”

  “Eight.”

  “Goodness, that’s nothing like Tom’s. He’s up to thirty already.”

  Tom thought the interruptions chart was a fine idea, and that it was a shame the way we bothered Mother when she was tr
ying to work.

  “Keep out of that office,” he’d bellow to any of us he saw approaching the door. “Ain’t you got no consideration for your poor mother? If there’s anything you want to know, come here and ast me, and I’ll tell you.”

  “All I want to know,” Ernestine said dreamily, on one such occasion, waving a letter that had arrived from upper New York State, “is what you’d do if the best-looking man in the world were madly in love with you.”

  Tom thought that over. “I believe,” he answered coyly, “that the first thing I’d do is ast him for his frat pin. And if you’re looking for yours, you’ll find it on the shelf down in the laundry.”

  “What’s it doing down there?” Ern asked anxiously.

  “It come down on your pajammers. If I hadn’t of seen it, it would of ruint my wringer.”

  Tom considered his own appearances in the office much too vital to be classified as interruptions.

  “Would you step out in the kitchen a minute, Mrs. Gilbreth?” he’d ask, sticking his head through the office door. “I got some thing I want to show you.”

  “Is it important?” Mother would say, fatalistically putting aside her papers and starting to get up from her swivel chair.

  “You know I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t important.”

  “Would you mind making a check on the interruptions chart?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. The chart seems to be working fine, Mrs. Gilbreth. The children ain’t bothering you half as much.”

  “The children seem to be getting the idea.”

  “I wisht you’d make one for the kitchen. They interrupt me all the time. I wisht someday you’d move your desk out there and see what I put up with.”

  Mother, rolling her eyes skyward for the benefit of Miss Butler, would follow him to the kitchen, to be shown a picture that Bob had drawn, a mole that Mr. Chairman had dug from the front lawn, or a new trick that Tom had taught the cat.

  Meanwhile, we watched the mail anxiously for replies to Mother’s prospectus. For almost two weeks, there was none. Then five arrived within two days—from the largest store in the world, in New York; from a drug manufacturer; a tool company; a dairy products distributor; an electrical appliances corporation.