Sybil Bruncheon's "Thanksgivings Past"... Eating on the run in 1968...

We have here an actual photo of Mrs. Helen Fobisher, a secretarial assistant at the General Motors showroom on West 57th Street in Manhattan during Thanksgiving week. Mrs. Fobisher had been with the company for just seven years (right out of college!), and in addition to her meticulous work habits, she also exhibited an extraordinary talent for innovation and, dare we say it, INVENTION!

Seen here is Helen in her "Disco-Desk", a one-piece piece of office furniture that allowed people to sit at their desks in perfect comfort without the trouble of pulling up a chair. And concealed in the space-age polymer-structure of the desk-top was a hot-plate food-prep unit which made it possible to simply press a few buttons, and have your lunch appear right in front of you... without interrupting your work-day! Talk about modern convenience and efficiency!! No more wasted time standing in line in the cafeteria or waiting at the corner deli for a hot corned beef sandwich that would be totally cold by the time you got back to the office. The Disco-Desk offered a fairly comprehensive menu of standard American work-day lunch-fare; the sort of food and refreshments that one would expect on an average weekday, Monday through Friday, nine to five! Certainly nothing too exotic, and definitely nothing French!

And wasn’t Helen lucky? Her bosses at GM were so impressed with her Disco-Desk, they bought her designs and patent as a surprise to her right before Thanksgiving! What a way to celebrate the Holiday season, huh? Interestingly, the New Products Division decided that instead of using Helen’s Disco-Desk for the office, they would install a small motor and four swivel casters and sell the desk as a futuristic bumper car at Coney Island. It was called the George Jetson Jalopy… it was a tremendous failure.

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