Last week, my friend and I went with some friends to a restaurant wehad not eaten in for a long time. When we placed our order, I noticedthat the waiter carried a spoon in his shirt pocket. It seemed a littlestrange,but I ignored it.However, when the busboy brought out water and utensils, I noticed healsohad a spoon in his shirt pocket. I then looked around the room, and sawthat all the staff had spoons in their shirt pockets.When the waiter came back to serve our soup, I asked, "Why the spoon?"Hegave me the this long reply: "Well, the restaurant's owners hiredAndersen-Consulting, who are experts in efficiency, to revamp all of ourprocesses.After several months of statistical analysis, they concludedthat customers drop their spoons 73.84 percent more often than any otherutensil. That represents a 'Drop Frequency' of approximately two spoonpertable per hour. If our employees are prepared to deal with thiscontingency, we can reduce the number of trips back to the kitchen andsave 1.5 man-hours per shift."A rather impressive answer.As luck would have it, I actually dropped myspoon and our waiter was able to replace it right away with his sparespoon. I'll get another spoon the next time I go to the kitchen, insteadof making an extra trip to get one right now."I was even more impressed.The waiter served our main course and Icontinued to look around. I then noticed that there was a very thinstring hanging out of the waiter's fly. Looking around, I noticed thatallthe waiters had the same string hanging from their flies. My curiositygot the better of me, and before he walked off, I asked the waiter,"Excuseme, but can you tell me why you have that string right there?""Oh, certainly!" he answered, lowering his voice. "Not everyone is asobservant as you. That consulting firm I mentioned also found out thatwe can save time in the men's room." "How so?" "You see," he continued,"by tying this string to the tip of our 'you-know-what', we can pull itout over the urinal without touching it.That way we eliminate the need to wash our hands, shortening the timespent in the lavatory by 36.39 percent.""Okay, that makes sense, but.........if the string helps you get itout, how do you put it back in"?"I don't know about the others, but I use the spoon."
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