THE SPOON

A lesson on how consultants can make a difference in an organization. Very Impressive!

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.'

It's also not good to think about what goes on in the kitchen. In relation to those efficiency ratings, etc. here's a true story. If you are in my age group you might remember your mom's wooden red-handled potato peeler. The company that made them made a very superior product, even had a contract with the Armed Forces. Their product was SO good that they could not understand why they were going broke. So they hired this young Madison Avenue genius to save their company for the tune of 10K. His advice (which saved the company BTW) was to stop painting the handles red. Just leave them as unpainted wood. The gist is that you put a PFC on K.P.+ set him to peeling a mountain of potatoes + at some point he will set that peeler down. When it rests in the peels with a red handle he can pick it out, with wood he can not + being a PFC he won't even try. He would just go get another. It worked. The guy saved the company from bankruptcy with a common-sense solution.

Another tidbit of marketing strategy; we are a right lane people, we drive there, we walk there, we don't even think about it, it's just how we are raised. Well, the marketing boys figured out that at the Malls if they locked the right-hand exit doors ( + it still happens fairly often) that it would trigger in the mind of the female shopper who has her mind on other things (as we all know they do). [They get 40K thoughts through their mind at the same time + in addition to not being aware, that tends to make them a potential victim, We guys are pretty stupid, we only think of one thing at a time.]Back to the point. By locking the right-hand exit doors it would program response to the woman's brain (REALLY, this was the research!) that when she encountered a locked door it triggered an impulse about thinking about that cute little thing she was going to buy but resisted. That little momentary jar would cause her in most cases to say oh what the hell, it's opnly $100.00. etc.