For all of you who frequent restaurants and recognise the need for the service to be faster, this is a timeless lesson on how consultants can make a difference to an organisation.
Last week, we took some friends out to a new restaurant and noticed that the waiter carried a spoon in his shirt pocket. It seemed a little strange.
When another waiter brought our water, I noticed he also had a spoon in his shirt pocket. When I looked around I saw that all the staff had spoons in their pockets.
When the waiter came back with our soup, I asked 'Why the spoon?'
'Well', he explained, 'the restaurant owners hired consultants to review 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 sure enough 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.
When I looked around, I saw that all the waiters had a string hanging from their flies.
So before he walked off, I said to the waiter, 'Excuse me, but why do you have that string right there?'
He lowered his voice and said 'Well, those consultants also discovered that we can save time in the 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.'