The family restaurant of T-Maître Pierre was a Louisiana institution. The type of place where generations gathered on smoking mountains of boiled river, spicy corn and seasoned potatoes. A place where the Louisiana Blues and Zydeco de Clifton Chenier played in the background and waitress of Wailstaffe waiters with bright arc ties. The walls were entered with faded photos of people smiling. No one knew who they were, but they felt like a family.
Pierre Thibodeaux, the founder, made sure that each client was treated as if they were really familiar. So it was a bit ironic than when he died, he had no heirs.
Within the week, the restaurant was acquired by the billionaire developer Ob Noxious, who went to reporters under a banner that said:
Make the crab
“They call these little lobster crabs. Very intelligent. I like it.” Wow!
To supervise the transformation, harmful brought Otto Maloree, a consultant known for managing companies of one billion dollars and making mathematics in his head (where he also did all his investigation).
Malestorae spent thirty minutes walking through the property, leaning on this, pressing that and leaving things as he shook his head. He did not spend much time before his report was issued to the press:
- Excess work: “Waiting personnel, custodian, dishwasher? None of them cooks, so we are losing money in them. Eliminate all those positions.”
- Menu simplification: “The boiled crab surpasses everything. Eliminates everything else. Eliminates the menu itself. The menus are nothing more than administrative swelling.”
- Decoration: “We have the best of all. Those photos fade and were of low quality when they were new. Rety them.”
- Modernization: “I found an IBM 5150 that still executes his books. This fascinates me and concerns me at many different levels.”
- Fixed costs: “This place is hemorrhage due to indirect costs. Forty percent of the income in the facilities and the administration? That is crazy. The ten percent is more than enough for a place like this! But we are much more generous and much more compassionate than people accredit people Dole Dole People Amarillo that will reach up to 15%!”
The changes occurred quickly literally during the night.
The next day, when the client appeared, they did not find music. Without waiters. No atmosphere. Only folding chairs, an old card table and flickering fluorescent lights (remodeling would be made later). The walls were naked, except for a sign that said:
T-maître Pierre’s Crawfish
Read carefully!
- Proceed to the rear parking and log in.
You will be assigned a ten minutes for boiling. - You will receive:
to. Crayfish
b. Corn without annoyance
do. Potatoes (with high quality dirt: pH between 6 and 6.5) - Hirar pot preheated to exactly 212 ° F.
Do not add or remove the water! - Spices levels are pre -established.
- ADDITIONAL NAPKERS: $ 0.25 each
- Inadequate elimination of corn peels: 10% surcharge
- Do not eliminate river crab at the time meals are lost.
Without exceptions, without refunds!
A middle -aged man with a Cajuns Ragin hat ‘read the instructions while. Then he looked around at the solemn -looking customers who were waiting in the row behind him. The place was calm, except for a few cushioned noises of the kitchen. He took off his cap, looked to the sky, stopped and muttered:
“Mais, ça, C’est Pas Bon”. (Man, this is not good.)
At the end of the week, two of the three chefs had enough to rent pots and pans and discuss the rights of burners. They moved to California, where a Chinese restaurant sacrificed a fully equipped kitchen and covered indirect costs. In a matter of weeks, they had introduced the crab of Rio del Almirante Pierre, with river crabs imported from the Chinese-Dipentes of the crabs of Rio de Louisiana accidentally introduced there in the 1930s.
Back in Louisiana, the rain was going down more and the lonely chefs was up to the ankle in a pond, scolding a customer registered by the water to reach seconds late when carrying its river crab in the pot.
Moral
This is what happens when strangers impose arbitrary cost limits on behalf of “efficiency.”
T-maître Pierre did not fail due to bad river crabs. He failed because he lost the infrastructure that made possible food, burners, tweezers and people. The chef, once celebrated by his recipes and skill, is now under the rain, unable to cook without the tools in which he depended. The recipes remain, but customers must now fight to close the gaps, leaving behind the joy and ease of a shared meal.
NIH facilities and administrative limit (F&A) are not different. Cutures funds for the essentials that allow research to prosper: laboratory space, equipment, compliance personnel and humans who know how to maintain complex machinery as autoclaves. The researchers, once empowered by infrastructure and experience, remain to see that their innovations stop as benefactors fight to rebuild what is missing.
In t-maître Pierre’s, you are stranded in the rain, struggling to discover how to make the river crab boiled. And when you ask for help, the chef responds:
“Your suis l’eniq qui rest, pis ça c’est tout ce that j’ai”.
(I am the only one left and this is all there).
Under the NIHS 15% CAP, its research institution is trying to finance a autoclave testing its separate sofa to find any loose change that may have fallen from visitors’ pockets. And that source is drying, since Paypal and Venmo have no loose changes.
Gregory Hopson works remotely of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as a business intelligence developer for Emory Healthcare in Atlanta, GA.