Andy Davis was proud of his restaurant, The Golden Bow. Its location
was perfect, its decor tasteful, its clientele generous and
distinguished. When he first took over the business a year ago, Davis
had worried that the local labor shortage might make it difficult to hire
good workers. But he had made some contacts at a local college and
hired a group of servers who worked well with customers and with one
another. The only problem he still had not solved was the dishwasher.
At first Davis felt lucky when he found Eddie Munz, a local high school
dropout who had some experience washing dishes. Davis could not
afford to pay a dishwasher more than $8 an hour, but Eddie did not
seem to mind that. Moreover, Eddie seemed to get the dishes clean.
But he was so slow! Davis originally thought Eddie just was not quick
about anything, but he changed his mind as he observed his behavior
in the kitchen. Eddie loved to talk to the cooks, often turning his back
on the dishes for minutes at a time to chitchat. He also nibbled
desserts off of dirty plates and sprayed the servers with water
whenever they got near him. The kitchen was always a mess, and so
many dishes piled up that often two hours after closing time, when
everything else was ready for the next clay, Eddie would still be
scraping and squirting and talking. Davis began to wonder if there was
a method to Eddie's madness: He was getting paid by the hour, so
why should he work faster? But Davis did not like having a constantly
sloppy kitchen, so he determined to have a talk with Eddie.
Davis figured out that Eddie had been making $56 on his reasonably
efficient nights and then met with Eddie and made him a proposal.
First he asked Eddie how soon he thought he could finish after the
last customer left. Eddie said an hour and a quarter. When Davis
asked if he would be interested in getting off forty-five minutes earlier
than he had been, Eddie seemed excited. And when he offered to pay
Eddie the $56 for a complete job every night, regardless of when he
finished, Eddie could hardly contain himself. It turned out he did not
like to work until 2:00 a.m., but he needed every dollar he could get.
The next week, a new chalkboard appeared next to the kitchen door
leading out to the dining room. On top it read, "Eddie's Goal for a
Record Time." By the end of the first week, Davis had printed on the
bottom "l.00 a.m." Davis began inspecting the dishes more often than usual,
but he found no decrease in the quality of Eddie's work. So, on
Sunday, he said to Eddie, "Let's try for an hour."
A month later, the board read "12:45 a.m." The situation in the
kitchen had changed radically. The former "Eddie the Slob" had
become "Eddie the Perfectionist." His area was spotless, he was
often waiting when someone came from the dining room with a stack
of dirty plates, and he took it as a personal affront if anyone found a
spot on a plate he had washed. Instead of complaining about Eddie
squirting them, the servers kidded him about what a worker he had
become, and they stacked the plates and separated the silver to help
him break his record. And the first time Eddie got done before 12:45,
they all went out for an hour on the town together and debated just how
much things had changed with Eddie's work….and wondered why…