The spoon

[Pburgh]

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 I noticed that he too 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 a consulting firm 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 after enjoying my soup, and, yes, he was able to replace it with his spare. "I'll get another spoon the next time I go into 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 our 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 could 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%."

"After you get it out," I inquired, "how do you put it back?"
"Well," he whispered, "I don't know about the others, but I use the spoon."

[JenBayles]

[vbhoutex]