Edison didn’t care what their ideas about seasoning were, or how much they liked to season food, or their taste buds, or what they did to the soup or how much salt and pepper they added to it, or anything else about their tastes.
He was watching to see if they tasted it first to see if it needed anything, or how much of anything if it did, were they researcher material or oafs that were unsuited for that work.
That’s the problem. Because he didn’t care what their ideas about seasoning were he jumped to his own assumption. A very dumb assumption. He refused to wrap his head around the idea that people can know something about how the soup tasted without actually tasting it. And in so doing found more oafs. By not realizing that a person can look at a bowl of soup, see what kind of soup it is, know how that kind of soup is usually prepared, see that the ingredients in the bowl are within the usual method, smell that the soup doesn’t vary from the usual method, know their own taste, and be able to come to a perfectly logical conclusion that they’d like it more with a bit of salt or pepper he was the oaf.
This becomes even more obvious if you know anything about Edison and his penchant for taking credit (and profit) for other people’s inventions. His abuse of employees. His fondness for suing companies that chose to by competing products.
The fact is when he was looking for employees he was looking for people that would put up with his #$%^ and let him steal their inventions without complaint. He wanted compliance, not people who could think for themselves. And that’s what this “question” was all about.