The Spoon

Last week we took some friends to a new
restaurant, 'Steve's Place' and noticed that the waiter who took our order
carried a spoon in his shirt pocket.


It seemed a little strange.
When the busboy brought our water and
utensils,
I observed that he also 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 inquired, 'Why the spoon?'


'Well, 'he explained,'the restaurant's owner
hired Andersen Consulting to revamp all of 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 replaced 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 saw that all of 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
learned
that we can save time in the restroom.


By tying this string to the tip of our 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%.


I asked quietly,
'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.'