The boy behind the counter

At a breakfast counter in Deira, the man rolling the sandwiches gets all the attention. He is quick, he remembers orders, he never seems to look down.

Watch long enough and the reason appears behind him. A boy who never speaks to a customer keeps the bread warm, the herbs washed, the beans hot, the paper cut and stacked within reach. When a tray empties, a full one is already there. The man at the front is fast because nothing he needs is ever missing.

Take the boy away and the same man, with the same hands, serves perhaps half as many people. He is no less skilled. He is simply spending his morning fetching.

Most work looks like this once it is examined. A small part of it is the thing only we can do. The large part is gathering, sorting, tidying, finding the file, setting up the tools, so that the small part can begin.

For a long time, having someone else do the gathering was a luxury, kept for people senior enough to have an assistant. That is changing. A surprising share of the setting up can now be handed to software, to a few well arranged systems, to tools that learn the routine if someone takes an afternoon to show them.

It takes effort to arrange. It is unglamorous, and it is easy to put off, because the old way still works.

But the counter across the road is watching too. Somebody is going to give the man at the front a boy behind him. If it is not us, it will be the shop next door.