Good to see people are still learning through repetitive tasks.

I was in a busy food stall the other day, like a lot of smaller size stalls, you have got to work fast to get a the orders through. So its pretty simple. Higher turnover = more orders = more profit. One of the more obvious things to do is to pass those in the queue a menu, so they can decide what to eat before they sit down. Trust me, these guys aint going to wait around for you to decide.

The other thing that they do is speed up the payment. Usually, you ask for the bill, the waiter goes to the counter, gets the bill, walks over to you, you look at it, take some cash from your wallet, he walks back to the counter etc etc. Its truly painful, for both sides. So some stalls have a slot next to your table where they put the order/bill on it, so they can skip going to the counter to grab it. Others tend to grab the bill, check the total damage, anticipate what the customer will pay you and prepare the change to go along with the bill. Since we are talking about food stalls, they are not dealing with credit cards here. So if it is going to cost 9.95SGD, he'll have 5cents ready just in case you pull out a ten dollars note. Cuts it down to just one round trip.

Another example. fancy going for a hair cut in a shopping mall? You know its packed, all 15 stations. All hair stylists are on the clock, literally (they have a timer just as they attend to you). Back at my home town where things are alittle slower, i guess it does not matter all that much. But over here, how do you avoid a potential bottle neck where everybody needs a hair wash? Well, they do that on the same spot as where you get your hair cut. They wet the hair and apply shampoo, and head massage that goes with it. After that, they will direct you to get your hair rinsed through, and back to the seat again. So there, no hogging of rinsing stations. And by the way, the shop looks busier too as everyone will be in their stations most the time.

Its a win-win scenario.