For all of you who frequent restaurants and understand the need for the
service to be faster, this short story is a timeless lesson on how
consultants can make a difference to 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.
When another waiter brought our water, I noticed he had a spoon in
his shirt pocket.
Then I looked around 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 Andersen Consulting
to revamp all our processes. After several months of analysis, they
concluded that the spoon was the most frequently dropped utensil. It
represents a drop frequency of approximately 3 spoons per table per
hour. If our personnel are better prepared, 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. "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 impressed. I also noticed that there was a string hanging out of
the waiter's fly.
Looking around, I noticed that all the waiters had the same string
hanging from their flies. So before he walked off, I asked the waiter,
"Excuse me, but can you tell me why you have that string right there?"
"Oh, certainly!" Then he lowered his voice.
"Not everyone is so observant. That consulting firm I mentioned also
found out that we can save time in th e restroom. By tying this string to
the tip of you know what, we can pull it out without touching it and
eliminate the need to wash our hands, shortening the time spent in the
restroom by 76.39 percent.
I asked "After you get it out, how do you put it back?"
"Well," he whispered, "I don't know about the others, but I use the
spoon."
