This is a simple system where two (2) or more (+) people (usually friends or coworkers that might be considered "buddies") combine efforts to accomplish a task or series of tasks.

As children the buddy system was employed for the reason of safety. When a child is traveling in the absence of an adult, having a "buddy" to trek with them is for the purpose of calling for help in the case that one of them incurs injury or another such problem. In groups of three (3) or more, a child stays with the one (1) in need of aid and the third acts as the messenger.

In the workplace, the buddy system allows multiple people to even out loads of work. If a worker has several tasks to complete in a set amount of time (s)he may ask a less busy coworker to do one of these jobs so that the deadline is met for each.
Example: At a restaurant where the servers bus (clean) their own tables, if a server needs to take a table's order, bus a table, and deliver food to a table, the server could ask another to do one of these tasks if they do not have some of their own to tend to.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.