Brilliant strategy of hiring dozens of untrained employees somehow fails to boost productivity

STOUFFVILLE, ON ― Local businesses were puzzled this week to find that hiring droves of inexperienced employees with no time allotted to train them had not helped increase their productivity to meet summertime demand.

The economic theory of diminishing marginal returns and the common sense theory of giving people time to learn have both been deemed obsolete, as businesses rush to take advantage of growing demand for everything that has been abandoned over the past few years, such as restaurants, wedding supplies, and pants.

“It seems no matter how many waitstaff we bring in, we can’t get food out to the customers any more quickly,” said restaurant owner Janice Prince, watching as two waitresses negotiated an awkward after-you dance in the kitchen doorway while precariously balancing glass trays of piping hot food. “I just don’t understand how that can be.”

Outside customer service, warehouses are also having trouble. “So we hired all these new people a week before our big sale, and sent them out on forklifts. But even after a whole five hours’ training, they’re still damned slow,” explained Daniel West of the site he oversees.

“We sent them onto an extra-crowded floor in place of our more experienced workers, who were given brand-new jobs. Then we had everyone work extra days late into the night so they could practise their new positions nonstop. But now, our old employees are working more slowly, and collisions are rising. Where did we go wrong?”

Both West and Prince lamented the loss of their previous staff, many of whom had moved on to better positions after being laid off early in the pandemic. “I know I’ve been saying for years that if servers don’t want to be paid in tips, they should find better jobs, but I always figured my own waiters would be too worn out to take that to heart,” added O’Neal.

At press time, businesses were addressing the consequences of their first brilliant plan with the equally brilliant plan of doubling their already unnecessarily high number of supervisors.

Beaverton