Once upon a time there was a restaurant. It was a good restaurant with a good reputation. It served quality food at a reasonable price. The service was excellent, and it became very popular.

One day a group of diners came to the restaurant and started ordering food. Dish after dish they ordered, and the waiter politely took their orders to the kitchen, where the chef happily made up each dish. The waiter started bringing the dishes to the table, but the diners were too engrossed in talking to each other and too busy ordering more food to eat what they had already requested.

Soon the table was full, so the waiter stopped bringing food to the table, instead leaving it at the serving hatch. Then the serving hatch was filled with dishes and the chef couldn’t move the food out of the kitchen. The staff started tripping over themselves because the dishes were piling up, going cold, and getting spoiled. The diners would never want those dishes now.

The kitchen staff were getting frustrated because they couldn’t work. The diners were getting cross because their food wasn’t arriving. The waiters were getting upset because everyone was blaming them, and still there was no place to put the food.

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