Why Thomas Edison made job applicants eat soup in front of him

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Thomas Edison didn't invent the light bulb (he greatly improved upon it), but he did have more than 1,000 patents, including alkaline batteries, the phonograph, motion picture camera, and a creepy talking doll. He was also good at hiring creative people for his companies (he started over 100), and one way he weeded out bad candidates was to serve them soup during the job interview. The soup served as a test. Adding salt or pepper to the soup before tasting it was a sure sign that the applicant was an assumption maker, not a question asker. In his experience, assumption makers weren't as innovative as question askers.