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Imagine it’s 1986 and you’re in New Jersey—

Look, I’ll answer the obvious question before you ask it. No, this post is (sadly) not an ode to Bruce Springsteen’s criminally under-appreciated banger, Tunnel of Love.

—anyways, also in 1986 in New Jersey, the famously multidisciplinary Bell Labs was almost 60 years old and still killing it.

The world’s super-nerds, all intentionally working in close proximity, had already invented much of the underlying technology we rely on today, from transistors to UNIX and the C programming language, to DSL modems, fiber optic cables, f’ing LASERS and — the backbone of our future — the solar cell.

But I’m not here today to tell you about any of those inventions, nor the storied offices and labs where they were birthed.

I’m here today to talk about the cafeteria.

Mathematician Richard Hamming, father of a bunch of math concepts I couldn’t begin to understand, usually ate lunch at the physics table.

But one day he realized that, however exciting the physics table may have been, “I already knew a fair amount of mathematics; in fact, I wasn't learning much.“

So the next Tuesday (I do not know which day it actually was, Tuesday seems reasonable), Hamming wandered over to the chemistry table, carrying a tray packed with pudding and sloppy joes, and asked, “Do you mind if I join you?”

The chemistry jocks looked up into the face of a man who has a whole bunch of math concepts literally named after him and quickly approved his request, not having any idea his true intentions.

A few bites of proto-Hamburger Helper later, Hamming broke the ice with a simple question for his new friends: “What are the important problems of your field?”

America’s chemistry luminaries filled him in, and then everyone cleared their trays and went about their work day.

About a week later, Hamming sat down again at the chemistry table and asked his new friends, super cool-like, “What important problems are you working on?” To which I imagine there were plentiful, reasonable answers.

But apparently Hamming wasn’t satisfied with their answers, because, by his own account, he joined the chemistry table again just a few days later — the same table that had welcomed him so warmly not long ago — and revealed his true intentions.

“If what you are doing is not important, and if you don’t think it’s going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working on it?”

Wow. Thanks, bud!

Reader, offices may be a thing of the past, but let me tell you: this isn’t the way to make friends in the cafeteria.

However.

I think Hamming was on to something.

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