Sometimes, Efficiency Takes a Back Seat

I’ve always liked completing tasks in the least amount of time possible.

I love trying to figure out a way to accomplish what I need to accomplish as efficiently as I can.

And I apply this concept to receptive tasks to see if I can make things go faster and/or more smoothly.

You’re probably thinking this is a mild form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and you’re probably right..

This is nothing new for me. Back in elementary school, when the teacher would punish the class by making us “write off” as we called it, I always tried to find a creative way to make it more efficient.

Instead of writing “I will not talk in class” 500 times, I would write “I” 500 times, then “will” 500 times, and so on, until I made that 500th period.

If I had it to do over again, I think I would study logistics. It would be fascinating to try to figure out a better way to get a case of widgets from point A to point B.

When the train I can see from my office go by, I always wonder how those shipping containers stacked two-high get where they’re going, and how anyone knows which is which.

It must be a pretty efficient operation. I would love to know more about it.

Not all organizations are efficient, though.

We’ve all seen Congress work not too efficiently.

Even my friends in local government will be the first to tell you the most mundane actions take longer than they should.

Here are a couple more examples I have noticed lately.

One of the roads we take on the way to see my in-laws goes up the side of a mountain.

About one-third of the way up is one of those big yellow signs that says “fallen rock.”

Fallen rock, past tense. Already happened.

You probably see where I’m heading with this.

Instead of having a sign made and paying a crew to go risk their lives installing it around a blind curve on a mountain road, why didn’t the applicable agency just pay the guys to go get the rocks?

And besides, if the rocks are just lying where they landed, why do we need to be alerted to that anyway?

Now, if the sign said, “Hey, a boulder is probably hurtling toward your car right now,” that would be different.

Not to pick on the people who keep our roads as safe as possible, but here’s another one.

While driving out of town the other day, I started seeing where someone had spray painted orange circles around potholes.

It took me a minute, but I finally came up with a theory.

I believe someone was sent out there with a can of orange spray paint to mark potholes the guys with the tar were supposed to fill up.

Why didn’t they just give the guy the keys to the tar truck instead of a can of spray paint?

All jokes aside, I’m sure there’s a reason, though I may never know what it is.

But what I really want to know is how that train car full of TVs ever manages to make it to the TV store.