Click on any chart to engorge it

Click on any chart to engorge it

Management Consultants

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.'