The post title is not some sort of Joy Bahar in a spandex suit joke. It’s a story about how great ideas are sometimes rewarded and sometimes not so well rewarded.

My late Father in Law as a bit of curmudgeon sometimes. Given that his family last just about everything during the Great Depression and he never made as much money as he probably should have, I can’t blame him.

He was a Master Electrician and given that he was born in 1915 you might say he got in on the ground floor of the trade.*

He worked at the trade until World War 2 came along. Although the military probably needed electricians, he was draft deferred because being a Master Electrician was classified as exempt. Instead of going into the military, he ended up working at an armory where artillery was made. When he told me this way back when I was first married, I thought it odd that they had him wiring cannons for electricity. He carefully explained, using small words, that his job was to wire the big machines that made the tools to make the machines that made the parts of the big guns.

Forging, casting, machining, all needed electricity to power the equipment.

Oh.

He was also a tinkerer and quasi inventor. He often came up with ideas to make equipment in the armory safer or more efficient. One idea was to put a shroud around the big pully that turned the belt on an air compressor. Since it was wide open there was more than a little risk that someone would get their clothes, hands, or something else caught in the machine.

The Colonel in charge of the armory like they idea and they built the cage as my Father in Law suggested. He got a nice letter from the Colonel thanking him for his suggestion. In fact, he got several nice letters from the Colonel for coming up ideas to improve efficiency and safety.

When the war ended, so did the job. The military didn’t need more artillery, in fact they had way more than they needed since there wasn’t an enemy to blow up any longer.

After working here and there for a few years he ended up at a large company that makes grooming equipment. Mostly for men, but now also for women. Back then they were known for making razors for men, along with things like shaving brushes and shaving soap. They also made shaving cream.

Once again he was hired to wire machines that made things, in this case razors and accessories. I won’t mention the name since the company is still in business and bigger than ever. The interested reader can probably figure it out, but don’t bother asking because even though everyone involved is long dead the company is still around.

At his new employer, he continued his habit of thinking of ways to help make the equipment and the process more efficient and safer. The company had suggestions boxes at various places around the plant and to encourage employees to come up with ideas the company not only offered nice letters, but they would give the employee a bonus if they adopted his idea.

The bonuses were from mostly from $5.00 to $25.00. That might not seem like much now, but back in the 1950s it was a decent sum.

He submitted several ideas, some of which were not accepted, but many of which were. I saw the letters not too long before my Mother in Law died. She was saver of just about everything in and when I heard this story she had all of the letters going back to World War 2. For the record this was in 2019 when she turned 100.

One of his suggestions was that they should put a suggestion box near the lunch counter in the plant where he and many others had their lunches. That way they wouldn’t have to walk any further and it would be easier to drop suggestions in the box.

That was a $5.00 suggestion, along with the nice letter from his boss.

One day he was at a drug store for some reason or another and he watched as the soda jerk pulled on a lever and whipped cream came hissing out into a glass.

BTW, “soda jerk” was the term because they would “jerk” on the handle, not because they were jerks. But, I digress.

Father In Law was struck by inspiration. What if they could put shaving cream into a can with compressed air and a push button on the top? Then men wouldn’t have to use soap and a brush to lather their face. They could just use the foamy stuff that came out of the can.

He wrote up the suggestion and it was an instant hit. It was in fact a $100.00 hit as that’s the amount of the bonus that he got. For an idea that made his employer millions, well now billions, and I expect that the boss got a raise and a promotion.

In addition to the $100.00 bonus, he got a nice letter, and was told that because he was an employee the company owned any ideas that he came up with. If he didn’t like it, he could leave and find a new job.

He didn’t. He stayed on for about another thirty years and continued to wire machines, some of which made the very product that he had invented.

To be fair, the company did treat him pretty well. He got free health care for the rest of his life and when he died my Mother In Law got free health care as well.

You might think that this was just family lore, which is what I thought when I first heard this story. It wasn’t, as I saw the letter from his boss because my Mother In Law never threw anything out.

That’s a story for another day.

*I apologize for that pun and will try not to write any more although I often find them irresistible.