The Spoon

Last week, we took some friends out to a fine restaurant, & noticed that the waiter who took our order carried a spoon in his shirt pocket. It seemed a little strange, but I ignored it. However, when the busboy brought out water & utensils, I noticed he also had a spoon in his shirt pocket. I then looked around the room & saw that all the staff had spoon in their pockets. When the waiter came back to serve our soup, I asked: “Why the spoon?” “Well,” he explained, “the restaurant’s owner hired Andyson Consulting, experts in efficiency, in order to revamp all our processes. After several months of statistical analysis, they concluded that customer drop their spoon 73.84% more often than any other utensil. This represents a drop frequency of approximately 3 spoons per table per hour. If our personnel are prepared to deal with that contingency, we can reduce the number of trips back to the kitchen & save 1.5 man-hours per shift.” As luck would have it, I dropped my spoon & he was able to replace it with his spare spoon. “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 rather impressed. The waiter served our main course & I keep look around. Then I noticed that there was a very thin string hanging out of the waiter’s fly. Looking around, I noticed that all the waiters had the same string hanging from their flies. My curiosity got the better of me & before he walked off, I asked the waiter, “Excuse me, but can you tell me why you have that string right here?” “Oh, certainly!” he answered, lowering his voice. “Not everyone is as observant as you. Andyson Consulting also found out that we can save time in the restroom.” “How so?” “See,” he continued, “by tying this string to the tip of…you know, we can pull it out over the urinal without touching it & that way eliminate the need to wash the hands, shortening the time spent in the restroom by 76.39%.” “OK, that makes sense, but…if the string helps you get it out, how do you put it back in?” “Well,” he whispered, lowering his voice even further, “I don’t know about the other, but I use the spoon.