Management Consultants

Last week, we took some friends out to a new Chinese Restaurant, and noticed that the waiter who took our ordercarried a pair of chopsticks wrapped in a clean tissue in his shirt pocket.

It seemed a little strange. When the busboy brought our water and utensils, I noticed he also had a pair of chopsticks in his shirt pocket. Then I looked around saw that all the staff had tissue wrapped chopsticks in their pockets!

When the waiter came back to serve our soup I asked, "Why the chopsticks?"

"Well," he explained, "the restaurant's owners hired some Management Consultants to revamp all our processes. After several months of analysis, they concluded that the chopsticks were the most frequently dropped utensil. It represents a drop frequency of approximately 3 chopsticks 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- ours per shift."

As luck would have it, I dropped my one piece of the chopstick and he was able to replace it with his spare set.

"I'll get another pair of chopstick the 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 chopsticks."