“Oh, well, nowadays nearly everything, you know, is done into a Curve. We put them on the board.”
“And what is this particular Curve of the employe used for?” I asked.
“Why,” said the student, “the idea is that from the Curve we can get the Norm of the employe.”
“Get his Norm?” I asked.
“Yes, get the Norm. That stands for the Root Form of the employe as a social factor.”
“And what can you do with that?”
“Oh, when we have that we can tell what the employe would do under any and every circumstance. At least that’s the idea—though I’m really only quoting,” she added, breaking off in a diffident way, “from what Miss Thinker, the professor of Social Endeavour, says. She’s really fine. She’s making a general chart of the female employes of one of the biggest stores to show what percentage in case of fire would jump out of the window and what percentage would run to the fire escape.”
“It’s a wonderful course,” I said. “We had nothing like it when I went to college. And does it only take in departmental stores?”
“No,” said the girl, “the laboratory work includes for this semester ice-cream parlours as well.”
“What do you do with them?”