Leveling Mothers Day?

Wall St. Journal (free via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Here is an interesting article on the very manual efforts at AT&T to balance supply (phone circuit capacity) with calling demand. Mothers Day, this Sunday, is the traditional busiest calling day of the year. This isn't AT&T's suggestion, but maybe some of us can call our Mothers on Saturday, instead of Sunday, to help level demand? Nah, probably not a good idea. The AT&T example is one where, even if they wanted to implement lean practices, they're pretty hampered against the idea of “leveling” demand.