My first afternoon Schmitz sauntered about to see what he could find out. Where did I live, what did I do evenings, what time did I get up mornings, what did I do Sundays? One question mark was Schmitz. One thing only he did not ask me, because he knew that. He always could tell what nationality a person was just by looking at him. So? Yes, and he knew first thing what nationality I was. So? Yes, I was a Turk. But the truth of it was that at the hotel I was part Irish and part French and part Portuguese, but all I could talk was the Irish because my parents had both died while I was very young. Another day, my Greek friend, the coffee man, said he was sure there was a little Greek in me; and an Austrian waiter guessed right away I was a bit Austrian; and every Spaniard in the kitchen—and the hotel was full of them—started by talking a mile-a-minute Spanish at me. So a cosmopolitan, nondescript, melting-pot face is an asset in the labor world in our fair land—all nationalities feel friendly because they think you are a countryman. But a Turk—that stretched boundaries a bit. For every question Schmitz asked me I asked him one back. His wife and daughter, sixteen, were in France for three months, visiting the wife's parents. As Schmitz's pernicketyness became during the next days more and more impossible to ignore, I solaced my harassed feelings with the thought of how much it must mean to Mrs. Schmitz to be away from Mr. Schmitz and his temperament and disposition for three blessed months. Perhaps the daughter, sixteen, had spoken of that phase of the trip to Mrs. Schmitz. Mrs. Schmitz, being a dutiful wife who has stood Mr. Schmitz at least, we surmise, some seventeen years, replied to such comments of her sixteen-year-old daughter, “Hush, Freda!” At five minutes to five Schmitz graciously told me I might go up to my supper, though the law in the statute books stood five. Everybody upstairs in the main kitchen, as I made my way to the service elevator, spoke kindly and asked in the accents of at least ten different nationalities how I liked my job. Hotel folk, male and female, are indeed a friendly lot. The dining room for the help is on the ballroom floor, which is a short flight of steps above the third. It is the third floor which is called the service floor, where our lockers are, and the chambermaids' sleeping quarters, and the recreation room.