EFFICIENCY PLUS

Frequent rest periods and a sympathetic audience for one's woes make the worker more efficient and productive according to Business School investigators in psychology. It is a welcome change for the efficiency expert to attempt for once to moderate the wheels of industry instead of everlastingly increasing their tempo and it must be a still more welcome change for the poor office workers to have a human interest shown in their affairs. Sympathetic listeners are all too few in any sphere of life.

If such psychological principles are valid for the office worker they must be true in other walks of life. The first of these principles has long been known in the laboring classes. The building trades are especially enlightened on this subject and it is the exception to find a bricklayer or mason who does not religiously observe the practice of frequent rest periods. As for the sympathetic audience perhaps the foreman could be drafted into the service and occasionally hold a confidential little tete-a-tete with the more forlorn workers under him. If Tony smashes his thumb under a sledge hammer the foreman could get him to talk about the wife and kiddies and thus get his mind off the injured member, or if Manuel should inadvertently fall asleep between rest periods the foreman should not try to awaken him but should sit down and listen sympathetically to his snoring. The only difficulty in this theory would seem to be in discovering that rara avis The Sympathetic Foreman.