Said good-bye to the theatre friends today. It was definitely sad and easily one of the best work environments I've ever been in. However, instead on dwelling on sadness, I wanted to contemplate different types of thought and workflow. Specifically outlined in a task we were assigned to do today:
We had to fill envelopes with patron's tickets to get ready to send them out. The following were the instructions and variables for how to fill them:
We had a stack of tickets that had to go in envelopes. The tickets were printed with 1 header that had the patron's address with the appropriate number of tickets the patron bought underneath it (a range of numbers from 1 to 16+). Then behind those tickets were the next patron's header and tickets, and so on.
We had to place the header in the large envelope with a plastic front pouch. The header (address side forward) slid into the plastic pouch so that the envelope was addressed. While the tickets had to be placed in a smaller ticket envelope (right side up). This ticket envelope went inside the larger envelope.
We also had to place a single leaflet which included our sponsor's advertisements and another leaflet that had our updated exchange policy. Each of these was only printed on one side, with the other side left blank.
The order we had to place everything in the envelope (so that when you opened the envelope this was the first thing you saw) was: Exchange policy (face front), sponsor advertisement (face front), and ticket envelope with tickets inside it. We were not required to seal or stamp the envelopes.
So with these instructions, these were the basic elements:
1) Large envelope with plastic pouch front
2) Smaller ticket envelope
3) 1 header with patron address
4) Patron's ticket(s)
5) Sponsor leaflet
6) Exchange policy leaflet
Each of us had stacks of at least a hundred different patron orders. So my question is: how would you set up your work station to package these envelopes?
Some of my co-workers set it up in a semi-circle around them, all of the pieces face-up. The tickets were to the left, the leaflets were towards the top of the semi-circle, and the envelopes were to the right. They started by stuffing all of the envelopes with the leaflets (both of them) before then going back and stuffing the small ticket envelopes and large envelope with both header and small ticket envelope.
Whereas I laid out my work station in a line. My stack of tickets in the far left, then the small ticket envelopes oriented upside down (so that with the motion, the "flip" would put the tickets in without having to rotate the envelope to the lettering right side up), then the sponsor leaflets upside down, then the exchange policy leaflets facing left (so that in one motion I could gather both together facing the correct way up), and finally the large envelope to assemble the whole package.
It was super interesting to consider how we were all assigned the same task, but we all tackled it a different way. The funniest thing to me was that when I told my mom this later and presented the scenario to her, she described an identical work set up to mine (rotated orientations included). She posited that ours was the "most efficient" way because we wouldn't have to go back and re-"touch" an envelope to assemble the entire thing. And we both agreed it would be interesting to do a timed experiment, with reasoning for why each person set up their work station in their own personalized way. I think it could be the newest "personality" test.
No comments:
Post a Comment