Why Wait?
This story in the Tosca series is about moving from a serial process to one that is parrallel in nature. We will attempt to highlight the important issues and how we deal with them in the real world.
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“Excuse me, are you the manager?” asks a friendly customer. “Yes, I am. Can I be of service?” says Jeremy the Tosca manager.
“I hate to be a bother, but my order is just taking forever. Could you please check on it?”
“I would be happy to”
As Jeremy walks away he wonders what could be taking the order so long. He takes a step back and looks at the scene that is his restaurant. After a few minutes of watching his waitstaff he spots the issue. Let’s take a look at what our waitress Amanda is up to.
Amanda takes an order from the table, walks over and submits the order and then waits for the order to complete before returning back to the table with the food. Jeremy sees her do this over and over causing frustrated customers and a lower quality of service.
Jeremy, pulls Amanda aside, and asks her “You seem to be standing around a lot? Have you noticed this as well?”
Amanda says “Yeah, but that’s what I was always trained to do. It seems very inefficient but its the only way I know of to make sure that everything gets done”
“Don’t worry about it, when Ben is done with the order he will shout ‘Order Up!’ and you will then know to go and deliver that order. In the meantime you can now assist the other customers. Amanda replies “But what if Ben forgets or is taking too long?” (see timeout)
Jeremy says “Its really not that big of deal, our cooks promise delivery of food with in 15 minutes of the order. So if you don’t have your order in 15 minutes, simply escalate the issue’ (what pattern is this?). If it happens more than twice in a night though, then let me know (blogjecting watchdog).
