Many years ago I lived with a roommate who went there on business. He said the girls sit in the window displaying their wares. What many guys didn't know, though, was that the windows had concealed microphones so the girls could hear what was being said about them. This allowed them to be picky about their customers.
Those are some pretty interesting pencil sharpeners on that site. It's hard for to me to believe that the engineering effort went into something like that over using a pocket knife..... You would think they would have reached the point where the benefits didn't outweigh the costs.