For more than a century, business experts have been trying to dial up the United States’ efficiency. Ever since Frederick Taylor published “The Principles of Scientific Management” in 1911, companies have focused on doing things more quickly, and raising consumers’ expectations as a result.
But Taylor’s ideas didn’t take into account the havoc a pandemic might do to supply chains — and how that would blunt what a few months ago seemed like a looming resumption of modern daily life’s zippy pace.
Across the country, Americans’ expectations of speedy service and easy access to consumer products have been crushed like a Styrofoam container in a trash compactor. Time for some new, more realistic expectations.
