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moving bicycles

Sunday, December 16, 2007

There's a charity in town that gives away thousands of bicycles each year. Last week I headed to town to help them build the bicycles. However, when I got there, I never even got a chance to so much as touch a tool. Instead, they needed to have the hundres of bikes that are already built arranged properly--this is called "staging." The bikes had to be arranged to facilitate inspection/readjustments and truck loading. Well, so much for having some fun.

Anyhow, I was there to help so if that's what they needed, then ok. That's unfortunate that it was so inefficient. Had they set it up when they started, then the bikes would've been staged as they were built. Furthermore, the volunteers were scattered about in separate pockets ... so it turned out that the rows of bikes neatly arranged behind me just minutes before was eventually moved forward and rearranged. That's called "rework" meaning "time and effort was wasted." I was part of the arranging minutes before. The guy in charge was part of the moving the bikes forward. Well, it's all volunteer work.

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