Load balancing people

Bit of background here – a teensy bit of geeky stuff and then on to the philosophy and real science. Load balancing involves having several servers or processors and then balancing any given workload across them. Simple in principle, worth a lot of cash to whatever company can make it work efficiently and automatically. Simple.

Now, how about load balancing people? I put this to one of the guys in the office. I was thinking along the lines of splitting any given task into segments, but Paul took thinks somewhat more literally and came back with the suggestion:

"See-saw"

A mental tangent arrived. OK, so you could load balance people on a see-saw. But what if one was really skinny and one was really fat?

"Put the fat one near the middle and the skinny one at the end."

OK… now, if there were an even number of people or a large enough number whereby you could mix them around enough this would continue to work. But, how about three people of similar weight? And you’re not allowed to put anyone right in the middle as they’d not actually be "balanced". My response:

"A really big mincer."

Going back to the original question, I admit this would perhaps affect their productivity somewhat, but it would allow you to load balance them pretty much perfectly. And if you bagged everything, it’d be less messy than trying to average things out by ripping off a limb here, popping out an organ there and shifting them to the other side of the see-saw.

Hey, you see more stupid things given government cash towards research grants. Think of the areas of study. How big a see-saw is convenient? What sort of strength bags do you need? Would being put on a see-saw or minced up really make someone work more efficiently?

I’m wasted here.