Doris Humphrey Mackley and her brother Dudley were the children of Harvey J. Humphrey, son of Dudley S. Humphrey II. She became secretary to the general manager; one of her jobs was to write articles about the various aspects and attractions of the park for the feature story of the Euclid Beach News. Doris wrote journals of documentary-type articles about each of the rides, the annual dance hall events, and the food and safety rules of Euclid Beach. The articles started in 1934 and continued until the 1969 closing of the park. The following article may very well be one of these articles, the date of its writing unknown. Doris and her brother Dudley assumed more important roles in the operation of the park in 1959 after the passing of their father.
The Humphrey Company has always felt that women have an important place in any organization. D. S. Humphrey the founder of the Beach made his wife, sister, and daughters a definite part of the working and executive staff. He also hired women to handle all the money taken in and to hold various other positions of responsibility throughout the park.
The employing of these feminine workers is done as carefully now as it was then. They are all women who can handle the public and mechanics of their jobs properly and with ease. Many of them have been with the company for a long time. They are to be found in the ticket booths in the campgrounds, in the office, at the ticket-choppers, some of the stands, and in the checkrooms.
Mrs. Kathryn Neubauer, who has charge of the hiring and directing the cashiers, has been at the park for 18 years and has held her present position for nine years.
There are very definite qualifications on which she insists when she picks out her cashiering crew. In the first place the character of the girl is to be established. In general there are two classes of girls working in the booths---college girls who live at home and have good responsible parents and married women with a feeling for the importance of their work and a dependence upon it. Then there is the personality of the girl. Every girl cannot be set up in an amusement park environment and be expected to retain a business attitude. There is, of course, nothing wrong if she is friendly with people around her but she must not be so amicable that her work suffers. She must have an even temper to deal with the customers harmoniously and must also be able to pick up the technical part of the job without too much trouble.
The greatest problem that the girls have to meet right now is the frequent complaint of buyers about paying the tax. Usually the cashier has to take time out to explain the Humphrey Company arrangement with the Tax Commission when there are innumerable people waiting for service behind the current customer. Another one of the functions of the cashier is deciding for people, particularly if they are not regular patrons, just how many tickets they want to buy. The girls have to know the prices of all things around the park. They also have to know locations of things to direct people around the grounds.
The rules for the cashiers which Mrs. Neubauer stresses are first of all attention to the work---which implies the omission of reading or sewing or much visiting; great care in handling the money; only the most tactful remarks to the customers; and especially neatness of appearance. The cashiers---in fact, all women in the park---have had uniforms for the past three years and this regulation solves much of the possible trouble about clothes and also makes the girls easily distinguishable. It was the buying of these uniforms that originally started the purchasing of uniform ties for men employees of the Beach-an incident that serves as an example of the types of activities and policies that women influence in an organization.
The feminine employees of the park are almost invariably among the loyalist and are particularly commendable for the concrete way in which they express their appreciation for any favors that may be granted to them by the management. Such women have great value in a park which is run on as strict a set of moral standards as the Beach because they take considerable interest in the young people around them and usually observe and report more quickly than men any possible weakening of those standards.
