The San Francisco lunch-scene replicates much about the current cities desperate search for assets, whether they are tech developers or housing — everything is a panic buy in San Francisco and lunch is no exception. Lunch therefore is no longer a casual choice; strategies, apps and ruthlessness need to be applied. Saying to oneself, “I think I’m in the mood for soup today”, means you will spend hours waiting in the wrong lines at the wrong times and have to revert to the slightly odd smelling Asian place everyone hopes to avoid. Layered over this is the ‘quantified-self movement’ and the sure knowledge that lack of planning will damage your ratings on whatever host of wearable’s and apps you are using to track your health.

In amongst all this is Mixtgreens. A gourmet salad bar that will sell you a salad for around $12. It ticks all the health, freshness and other cultural boxes, with one major problem — the wait. The line at mixtgreens is invariably out the door, and invariably unpredictable with customers clearly trying to beat the system by utilizing an 1130am lunch window to no avail. The necessity to wait over 20mins is therefore built into the experience and it creates an expectation of a certain delivery speed when you finally get to point of placing your order.

Now Mixtgreen’s managers are clearly students of the industrial process and they have broken down the necessary lettuce flinging and ingredient dispersal into 4 or 5 servers who deliver from a more or less standard menu. It has however become apparent at our local mixtgreens that there is a significant time difference in delivery depending upon the server you pull.

A good salad creation time (we’ve noted) is between 1.30secs to 2mins. 1.30secs is possibly the edge of human performance, as you cannot physically fling the stuff around faster than that. Most of the servers perform in this range. However we have found one that consistently operates at the 4min mark. This individual therefore produces one salad to every other servers two — a clear difference. This made me think about what is making a difference here.

First off, positioning seems to be important, as in school as in work; the kids sitting furthest away from teacher do the least. Our slow server is the furthest away from the supervisory elements by the cash register and performance generally increases the nearer to the cash register the servers are. Secondly, preparation counts, our slow server never has his materials in the right place and is always searching for a container lid, or just the basics of his trade — in short he doesn’t do his homework. Thirdly, concentrate. An obvious point but making conversation with co-workers and customers is a delay but more than that it causes mistakes to be made consistently. Talking in class makes a difference. Fourthly, body posture is important. Standing like Jar jar Binks is a self-reinforcing pattern, walk loose, act loose, be slow. There is a reason Jar Jar Binks was the most hated Star Wars character of all time — he’s battling an intergalactic emergency with an attitude more suited to sitting on the beach — if he paid more attention he probably wouldn’t keep putting his team in deadly peril. Overall, if you have an intense job you should embody that, Shakespeare made the point in Henry V better than I can,

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead! In peace there ’s nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility; But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger: Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.

So the point to all this is that there are just consistent highly basic things individuals can do in any environment where something is expected from them from first grade onwards (you can still roll on the floor in K). Pay attention, sit-up straight, and be prepared. What helps you when you are six is still worth knowing when you are 26!