The Spoon

Subject: The Spoon Wed Jun 10, 2009 12:13 pm

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 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 (now "Accenture") 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 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."

"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!"