Gentlemen,
When throwing snowballs and rubbing snow your personnel acts in a very rude and harsh way, not only toward our factory girls, but also toward the ladies of our office staff, moreover, which is all the more annoying, the hands of your personnel aren’t exactly squeaky-clean.
We request you to take measures, so that this won’t happen again, because otherwise we’ll contact the police. We don’t want our personnel to be annoyed in any way.
Yours faithfully,
N.V. HOUTINDUSTRIE “PICUS”
This letter, dated January 16, 1929, is in Van Doorne’s original forge; an extension to a former beer brewery, currently the DAF Museum.
HA ! .
-Nate
That would be an interesting research project. Who figured out snowball fights? My guess is it was figured out about ten seconds after the first caveman walked outside, picked up the white stuff on the ground, found he could pack it solid and saw his buddy coming out of his cave next door!
Boys, boys, boys….. Our wiring hasn’t changed. Nor our toggle switches.
Interesting differentiation between “factory girls” and “office ladies”.
I thought that was interesting too — and I’m wondering if the incident that caused this letter to be issued was one of the office ladies getting beamed by a greasy snowball.
I can only imagine the return letter:
“Gentlemen – We have spoken to our employees and they promise to correct their behavior. From now on all of our workers will carefully wash their hands before throwing snowballs. Nyah nyah.
Respectfully yours….”
Paul: *ding* !
So from what I read lately, groping women was tolerated, but throwing snowballs at them wasn’t. Old times were weird.