The Spoon

This is a forwarded article. Not sure if it's a joke but
it sure makes you wonder. Enjoy it anyway.

















Last week we took some friends out to a new Italian restaurant,
and 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 bus boy brought out water and utensils, I
noticed he also had a spoon in his shirt pocket, then I looked
around the room and 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 recently hired
XYZ Consulting, experts in efficiency, in order to revamp
all our processes. After several months of statistical analysis,
they concluded that customers drop their spoons 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 and save 5 man-hours per shift."

As luck would have it, I dropped my spoon and he was able to
replace it with his spare spoon. "I'll get another spoon the
next time I go to the kitchen instead of making an extra trip
to right now."

I was rather impressed. I then 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 once more,
and before he walked off, I asked the waiter, "Excuse me,
but can you tell me why you have that string right there?"

"Oh, certainly!" he answered, lowering his voice.
"Not everyone is as observant as you. That consulting firm
I mentioned 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
what, we can pull it out over the urinal without touching it, and
that way eliminate the need to wash our hands, shortening the
time spent in the restroom by 76.39%."

"Okay, 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 others, but I use the spoon."