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."