Eating Out:
Last week, I took some friends to a new restaurant, and noticed that our waiter carried a spoon in his shirt pocket. It seemed a little strange, but I ignored it. However when the busboy brought us some water, I saw that he also carried a spoon in his shirt pocket. I looked around and saw that all of the staff had spoons in their pockets. When the waiter came back, I asked him, "Why the spoon?"...
"Well," he replied "the owners decided to get some advice from Price Waterhouse Coopers, management consultants and experts in efficiency, to make sure the restaurant would be smooth running and save man-hours at the same time. After several weeks of investigation, they concluded that customers drop their spoons 78.34% more often than any other utensil. This equates to 3.7 spoons per hour, per table. If we can deal with this issue, then we can reduce the number of trips back to the kitchen and save 1.5 man-hours per shift."
As luck would have it I dropped my spoon while having soup and he replaced it immediately. "I'll get a new one next time I go to the kitchen instead of making that extra trip" he said. I was impressed. These consultants obviously know their stuff. I continued to observe the workflow in the room when my eye was caught by what looked like a small piece of string, hanging out of the waiter's fly. I looked around, and sure enough, every male employee had string hanging from their flies. My curiosity again got the better of me, and I called our waiter over.
"Excuse me, but why do you have a piece of string right there?" "Oh, not every one is as observant as you," he replied. "The Consulting firm found that this also saves time."
"How is that?" I asked. "Well, by having this string tied to my
you-know-what, I can pull it out over the urinal, without touching it, thereby eliminating the need to wash my hands and reducing the time spent in the washroom by 72.6%."
"I can see how it would do that" I said, "but 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."