Arthur Anderson on the Restaurant biz

Ian Murray seamus2001 at attbi.com
Thu Feb 21 10:55:01 PST 2002


THE SPOON"

A timeless lesson on how consultants can make a

difference for an organization...

Last week, we took some friends out to a new

restaurant, and noticed

that the waiter who took our order carried a

spoon in his shirt pocket.

It seemed a little strange, but I ignored it.

However, when the busboy

brought out water and utensils, I noticed he also

had a spoon in his

shirt pocket, then looked around the room and saw

that all the staff had spoons in their pockets.

When the waiter came back to serve our soup I

asked, "Why the spoon?"

"Well," he explained, "the restaurant's owners

hired Anderson Consulting, experts in efficiency, in order to revamp all our

processes. After several months of statistical

analysis, they

concluded that customers drop their spoons 73.84

percent more often

than any other utensil. This represents a drop

frequency of approximately 3 spoons per table per hour. If our personnel is

prepared to deal with that contingency, we can

reduce the number of

trips back to the kitchen and save 15 man-hours

per shift."

As luck would have it I dropped my spoon and he

was able to replace it

with his spare spoon. "I'll get another spoon

next time I go to the

kitchen instead of making an extra trip to get it

right now." I was rather impressed.

The waiter served our main course and I continued

to look around. I

then noticed that there was a very thin string

hanging out of the

waiter's fly. Looking around, I noticed that all

the waiters had the

same string hanging from their flies. My

curiosity got the better of

me and before he walked off, I asked the waiter,

"Excuse me, but can you tell me why you have that string right there?"

"Oh, certainly!" he answered, lowering his voice.

"Not everyone is as observant as you. That consulting firm I mentioned also found out that

we can save time in the restroom." "How so?"

"See," he continued, "by

tying this string to the tip of you know what, we

can pull it out over

the urinal without touching it and that way

eliminate the need to wash

the hands, shortening the time spent in the

restroom by 76.39 percent." "Okay, that makes sense, but . . . if the string helps you

get it out, how do you put it back in?"

"Well," he whispered, lowering his voice even

further, "I don't know about the others, but I use the spoon."



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