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.

When the busboy brought our water and utensils, we noticed he
also had a spoon in his shirt pocket. Then I looked around 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 the rest-room. 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 rest-room by 76.39%."

"Yes, but 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."

-- Modified on 6/25/2003 11:30:32 AM