Friday, April 06, 2007
Starbucks
Update: Actually, the real reason for the new price is an increase in the sales tax in King County.
I recently started reading Freakonomics, which I guess inspired me to make the following observation.
The price of a grande drip at the Starbucks by work has gone from $1.80 (after tax) to $1.81 for whatever reason. This also means that when I give the cashier two $1 bills, the amount of change I get back has changed from $0.20 (2 dimes) to $0.19 (1 dime, 1 nickel, and 4 pennies).
This can result in two side effects, from my perspective anyways.
1. The amount of extra time to give change for $0.19 probably offsets the extra $0.01 that they're charging me for the coffee. This is because instead of giving 2 coins of one denomination, the cashier now has to give me 6 coins from 3 different denominations. So if the cashier takes an extra 3 seconds per transaction, the company has to pay her less than $12/hour in order to make a profit (and by $12/hour, I mean overall cost, which includes wage, health benefits, training, and any other incidentals).
2. I'm now much more likely to leave the change as tip rather than keeping it. Why? First of all, I'm now getting 4 pennies, which are useless. But I can't just leave the 4 pennies and keep the dime and the nickel, since that will look bad in front of the other customers. Furthermore, I now get 6 coins instead of 2 (and the original 2 dimes are the smallest, lightest coins out there), which is a burden (I prefer not carrying any change at all). So more tip for the baristas.
If the 1 cent does actually offset (or even beat) their productivity loss, then this is actually a win for the company, since the staff will be getting more tips (19 cents at a time).
I recently started reading Freakonomics, which I guess inspired me to make the following observation.
The price of a grande drip at the Starbucks by work has gone from $1.80 (after tax) to $1.81 for whatever reason. This also means that when I give the cashier two $1 bills, the amount of change I get back has changed from $0.20 (2 dimes) to $0.19 (1 dime, 1 nickel, and 4 pennies).
This can result in two side effects, from my perspective anyways.
1. The amount of extra time to give change for $0.19 probably offsets the extra $0.01 that they're charging me for the coffee. This is because instead of giving 2 coins of one denomination, the cashier now has to give me 6 coins from 3 different denominations. So if the cashier takes an extra 3 seconds per transaction, the company has to pay her less than $12/hour in order to make a profit (and by $12/hour, I mean overall cost, which includes wage, health benefits, training, and any other incidentals).
2. I'm now much more likely to leave the change as tip rather than keeping it. Why? First of all, I'm now getting 4 pennies, which are useless. But I can't just leave the 4 pennies and keep the dime and the nickel, since that will look bad in front of the other customers. Furthermore, I now get 6 coins instead of 2 (and the original 2 dimes are the smallest, lightest coins out there), which is a burden (I prefer not carrying any change at all). So more tip for the baristas.
If the 1 cent does actually offset (or even beat) their productivity loss, then this is actually a win for the company, since the staff will be getting more tips (19 cents at a time).
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
A Bust
After forcing businesses to spend millions of dollars patching and updating software for the new daylight savings time, it appears that there's not much of an effect at all.
The only thing this piece of legislation did was make me show up for work an hour late for a week.
The only thing this piece of legislation did was make me show up for work an hour late for a week.