A Long Way To Go For A Rant

I wonder what kind of statistical analysis the cafeteria workers run on toaster casualties

Has there been another Toaster fatality?


In the most immediate sense, I'm not aware of any this week, but there have been plenty in recent memory.   So, you all remember the Famed Toaster of Hades, right?  Well, I ponder it every now and again, often when I'm waiting for a bagel to toast, waiting with anxious anticipation to see what will emerge.  See, the Toaster has claimed so many victims that it prompts various actions by the folks who run the Adorably Tiny Cafeteria Thing In My Building.  You certainly remember some of them.  There's the "Use Your Head When Toasting Bread" sign, the knob removal, the scotch-tape-a-piece-of-metal-over-the-missing-knobs ploy to restrict access to the controls, and (I'm assuming) a change in the PM frequency to reduce the crumb contamination levels.


As an aside, it seems like you're not the only one With These Types Of Problems


What concerns me is the success criteria of these various actions.  I'm an engineer...so everything I do has to have a problem statement, an action plan, owners, target dates, and success criteria.  For example, if tool availability is low, I implement a fix then track how the availability changes as a result of that action.  Sometimes, it seems like overkill (or over-management, but that's splitting hairs) but it gives people a single number by which to judge me...and that just makes sense.  I'm curious if the cafeteria workers are subject to the same scrutiny that I am.  I'm guessing not, but it's fun to think about.

Here's a small office and a computer with statistical analysis software installed.  One of the cashiers pores over a trend chart of toaster fires per week, tirelessly coming up with mean and sigma charts, determining the frequency of fires and creating a pareto of the points of cause.  Croissants are #1, followed by buttered items, flaky pastries, donuts, muffins, bagels etc.  The #1 root cause is determined to be people deciding to toast things that shouldn't be toasted, and that operator education is the corrective action.  The "Use Your Head When Toasting Bread" sign is born!  A couple weeks later, the entire process is recreated, and the incidents of croissants and buttered toast igniting into fiery orbs of death are reduced, and the cashier can present the improvement to management.  The frequency of product ignition is still higher than the purchase spec of the toaster, so the cashier is sent back to re-do all of the analysis and begin the process again.

I choose to believe this is why I end up standing in line at the empty cash register for a couple minutes every morning before one of the cashier comes out of the office to ring up my iced tea.