"Ричард Фейнман. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!/Вы, конечно, шутите, мистер Фейнман! (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

I thought that was perfect, but the boss came by one day, and she
wanted to answer the phone, and she couldn't figure it out - too
complicated. "What are all these papers doing? Why is the telephone on this
side? Why don't you... raaaaaaaa!"
I tried to explain - it was my own aunt - that there was no reason
not to do that, but you can't say that to anybody who's smart, who runs a
hotel! I learned there that innovation is a very difficult thing in the real
world.


----
Who Stole the Door?


At MIT the different fraternities all had "smokers" where they tried to
get the new freshmen to be their pledges, and the summer before I went to
MIT I was invited to a meeting in New York of Phi Beta Delta, a Jewish
fraternity. In those days, if you were Jewish or brought up in a Jewish
family, you didn't have a chance in any other fraternity. Nobody else would
look at you. I wasn't particularly looking to be with other Jews, and the
guys from the Phi Beta Delta fraternity didn't care how Jewish I was - in
fact, I didn't believe anything about that stuff, and was certainly not in
any way religious. Anyway, some guys from the fraternity asked me some
questions and gave me a little bit of advice - that I ought to take the
first-year calculus exam so I wouldn't have to take the course - which
turned out to be good advice. I liked the fellas who came down to New York
from the fraternity, and the two guys who talked me into it, I later became
their roommate.
There was another Jewish fraternity at MIT, called "SAM," and their
idea was to give me a ride up to Boston and I could stay with them. I
accepted the ride, and stayed upstairs in one of the rooms that first night.
The next morning I looked out the window and saw the two guys from the
other fraternity (that I met in New York) walking up the steps. Some guys
from the Sigma Alpha Mu ran out to talk to them and there was a big
discussion.
I yelled out the window, "Hey, I'm supposed to be with those guys!" and
I rushed out of the fraternity without realizing that they were all
operating, competing for my pledge. I didn't have any feelings of gratitude
for the ride, or anything.
The Phi Beta Delta fraternity had almost collapsed the year before,
because there were two different cliques that had split the fraternity in
half. There was a group of socialite characters, who liked to have dances
and fool around in their cars afterwards, and so on, and there was a group
of guys who did nothing but study, and never went to the dances.
Just before I came to the fraternity they had had a big meeting and had
made an important compromise. They were going to get together and help each
other out. Everyone had to have a grade level of at least such-and-such. If
they were sliding behind, the guys who studied all the time would teach them
and help them do their work. On the other side, everybody had to go to every
dance. If a guy didn't know how to get a date, the other guys would get him