What is a “Taco Card”?

When you go to a fast food restaurant and order a taco, it often happens that there is not one person in the entire restaurant that knows how to make a taco.  Instead, there is an assembly line of workers standing in front of prepared food. At each station on the assembly line, there is a taco card that shows a picture of what the employee should do next.  The worker puts a tortilla on the line, adds a meat and then pushes the taco to the next station.

It's the same with many discount brokers. Rather than having a single professional handle the transaction, they break the job into simple process pieces for an assembly line method of working.

Let's be honest, there is a time and a place for an assembly line. There is a time when it makes business and economic sense to break the process so that process-oriented small-money people can efficiently get the job done. But, for most people, real estate is the largest purchase (or sale) they'll ever make. This is probably not the best time to go with process-oriented people who are working on an assembly line. This is the time when you want a goal-oriented professional who knows how to get the results you deserve.