Fable
The inn divides work between service and the kitchen chef
In the east of town there was an old inn with modest business, but the waiter at the door never led a guest astray. When a guest came in, he took one glance: a porter on the road, led to the quickest coarse tea stall; a scholar heading to the capital, invited to a quiet table by the window; a woman with family in tow, guided into a warm room with a brazier. The waiter had done this for fifteen years, and of the guests he had sorted, there were no fewer than eight hundred if not a thousand, and he had never heard a guest complain about poor service.
The back kitchen was another scene entirely. Chef Zhang had once watched a single stove alone, but as more guests came, three stoves burned at the same time. The flame for stir-fried liver tips could not go out, the clay pot for stewed old duck needed a slow simmer, and the steamed fish had to seize the moment over high heat. At first Chef Zhang could watch them himself, but later he truly could not keep up, and either a pot burned or a dish missed its serving time.
The innkeeper thought about it and moved the waiter to help in the kitchen. The waiter really could size people up: as soon as he saw what was being cooked on the stove, he immediately judged which stove it belonged to. With this division of labor, Master Zhang was indeed more relaxed, and there were no mishaps for the first few days.
But the good times did not last. One day three tables of urgent dishes arrived at once: upstairs, a young scholar rushing to eat before setting off before dusk; downstairs, relatives at a wedding waiting for the host to be seated before serving; and in between, a team of armed escorts saying they wanted to eat while on the road. The waiter, following the old method, assigned the three dishes to three stoves, feeling it was fair.
The problem was that all three stoves were smoking at the same time, and Master Zhang was running back and forth between them alone, gasping for breath. The high heat for the stir-fried liver tips was slowed by the low heat for the stewed duck, and the steam from the fish threw off the wok's oil smoke. By the time all three dishes were served, the young gentleman had gone pale with waiting, the escorts complained the food was cold, and the relatives hosting the wedding even threw down their chopsticks.
Then the boss came in. He took the waiter aside and said: "You're good at dividing up work, but the back kitchen is not the same as guests entering the door. The back kitchen is three fires burning together; assigning them to the stove is only step one, step two, step three. After stir-frying comes plating, after plating comes serving, and after serving the next dish has to follow. This is not a question of who gets what, but of how to keep all three people moving and still bring together one table's worth of dishes."
Xiao Er was stunned. He suddenly realized that a guest entering the door required only one judgment, but the kitchen firing on all burners at once meant every step needed someone watching, urging, and picking up. Dividing work is about finding the right people; scheduling is about making the right people move together at the right time.
Later the inn changed its rules: the waiter still greeted guests at the door, but the kitchen no longer let him stick his hands in and boss people around. Master Zhang took on two helpers himself, one for prep and cutting, one for running dishes. The three each had their own station, but the cooking order, the timing of the heat and the rhythm of serving were all watched by Master Zhang alone. The three flames no longer flared at random, and a table of dishes finally came out on time.