Will someone please tell me the role of an efficiency expert?

It goes without saying that anyone who works for someone else is worried about now. Cutbacks are running rampant as the economy spirals downward and our retirement funds disappear like water during a drought.

And about now, there is a special breed of know-it-alls that raise their heads during bad times about like real estate agents surface during good times.

They are called efficiency experts, those well-dressed individuals who carry expensive brief cases and show up to put the fear of God in every business where they suddenly appear.

Efficiency experts resemble vultures circling wounded or sick animals in the middle of a field waiting to strike and remove the prey. You may have worked for decades in one place when all of a sudden, a stranger with a sharp pencil and a convincing voice shows up and is instantly worshiped by management as an expert.

Mind you, in many cases the efficiency expert actually has good advice, although we all kind of wonder why it takes a new guy on the block to disclose a weakness that has been evident for days, weeks or even years before.

I mean, why did the boss have to actually hire someone to outline a weakness recognized by everyone from the janitors to the CEO? Just when we’re supposed to be cutting corners, management spends big-time bucks for someone who not only doesn’t know his or her way around the building but could not possibly understand the strengths and weaknesses of the inner workings.

So, as frightened employees sit in their cubicles, they begin to fear that they are in the crosshairs. Or better yet, we all wonder just what it is about an efficiency expert that makes him or her knowledgeable about a topic he or she hasn’t been involved with until only the past few days.

About the time you get settled into your desk, there is that new face sitting in the boss’s office reviewing paper work and obviously studying the employee base. You start to feel like a rookie on a pro football team and cuts are about to be made.
Paranoia begins to set in and just when you should be concentrating on that deal you need to close, you start worrying about the fact your shirt may be wrinkled or your hair might be out of place. You don’t know the efficiency expert, so you don’t know what that individual is watching, what he is saying or what is expected of you.

But you know the hammer is ready to fall while also realizing that reaching your full productivity is stymied by an economy so ill that politicians are saying we are on the brink of another depression.

You have personal issues in your life that need to be addressed and now the efficiency expert is circling the office with a move so slow and smooth that you’d swear you’re hearing the music from the movie “Jaws” in the background.
Just when you start to relax, the efficiency expert is back on the grounds again. You see this same individual walking down the hallway, so you instantly duck into one of the backrooms or exit out a side door.

The government is bailing out the financial system in this country and you begin to wonder who is going to help you when times get even tougher. You’re an honest, hard-working soul who is simply trying to make ends meet, and it’s difficult to understand why the big boys take the money and go on expensive junkets while you are not sure you could even get unemployment benefits were you to get terminated.

Oh well, maybe I’m ready for another job change anyway. And while we’re discussing the future, I think it’s time to become an efficiency expert so that I can see first-hand just what these people do.

Mike Henle is a Las Vegas-based freelance writer and the author of “Through the Darkness: One Man’s Fight to Overcome Epilepsy.” He can be contacted via email at mhenle@aol.com or through his web site www.mikehenle.com.