Efficiency

Okay, I went to get a flu shot today. Fun stuff, that. Little prick in the arm, and you don't get the flu for a year. Gotta love it.

Anyway, when I got there I was surprised (as I'm sure I am every year) at the sheer volume of people. The line was all the way out the door on the ground level, snaking up and down the stairs up to the third where the clinic was. Obviously, my first thought was "oh, shit, this is going to take years." So I got my forms and started to fill it out and all that jazz. I looked up after the first two boxes and saw I was no longer in line at all. It had moved magnormiously,. which is, in fact, a word I made up. How this happened? I have no idea. As it turns out, the level of efficiency in that place was astounding. I had to struggle to finish the form before I got all the way through that hell of a line in about five minutes. Once there some bored looking woman just pointed to a desk, I gave the other bored looking man at a computer the form, and they pointed me to another bored looking woman who was holding a needle. Up goes the sleeve, swab, poke, swab, bye! All over in about 27 seconds.

I walked out totally amazed and with a slightly sore bicep and wondered why all operations couldn't run that smoothly. Of course, a shot is a very quick thing as it is, but the sheer volume of people being processed, with every single one of them documented, is huge. Even for longer processes, I think we have something to learn from these bored people with computers and needles.

And by the way, the two women were quite elderly and therefore uninteresting, but that guy at the computer was pretty damn sexy. He looked to be about in his mid-twenties, he had a huge-but-bored smile, was black, had blue eyes, and had the best jacket I've ever seen. I think I'm still madly in love with him. I REALLY like cute red jackets, recognizable to those of you who heard about that Spanish guy I wrote about on dA.

Okay that's enough for now. Bye!