No, really.

When I worked at McDonalds many years ago, for the most part roles were assigned similar to a football team. Out the back we had the person on “Production” wrapping the burgers and running the show, “Grill” to flip the patties, “Dress” to put the secret sauce on the Big Macs. Step out front and you could be on “Front Counter” serving the glorious customers, “Drive-Through” – well, I’m sure that one’s obvious – or “Dining Room” to empty the bins and clean the tables. Not much missed, and it was a mark of your talents (and the little stickers you could get under the name on your badge) if you could fulfil a number of roles, and even better if you could multitask in the same shift.

There was another role as well, which was made up of a multitasker; the Gopher. This individual had a remit to roam around at will, looking for areas under pressure and jumping in where required – effectively, always looking to find the weakest link in the chain and make sure it didn’t break. I’ve seen similar systems in restaurants and cafes.

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Interesting discussion this week that had me thinking about the best way to manage an intranet (or more accurately, a large collection of intranets) within a huge organisation. The person on the other end of the phone line was questioning an organisation-wide site, on the grounds that no-one had asked for the central team’s permission / forgiveness during design and development (said team has not updated their “standard” design since 2002, but we’ll overlook that for the sake of the argument and pretend they’re up to date)
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