Happy Days in Random Chatter 10

[Digit]

Know your linguistic philosophies

[Emiliana]

Know your linguistic philosophies

Hehe.

[Digit]

I wonder if Chick-fil-A has lower expenses for beverages per combo meal-purchasing customer compared to other fast food restaurant chains like McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, etc. Chick-fil-A is the only one I've ever seen of fast food restaurants that offer free drink refills with the purchase of a combo meal that has access to the refills in the hands of a cashier. At any other fast food restaurant I've been to, you can refill your drink yourself, but at every Chick-fil-A I've been to, you have to ask a cashier to do it for you.

I wonder if that translates to significant numbers of people not wanting to go to the "trouble" of asking for a refill.

[Marduk]

I wonder if Chick-fil-A has lower expenses for beverages per combo meal-purchasing customer compared to other fast food restaurant chains like McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, etc. Chick-fil-A is the only one I've ever seen of fast food restaurants that offer free drink refills with the purchase of a combo meal that has access to the refills in the hands of a cashier. At any other fast food restaurant I've been to, you can refill your drink yourself, but at every Chick-fil-A I've been to, you have to ask a cashier to do it for you.

I wonder if that translates to significant numbers of people not wanting to go to the "trouble" of asking for a refill.

It is unlikely, if there is a difference, for it to be statistically significant. The estimated restaurant cost for a medium soda is about 20 cents, and almost half of that is in paper/plastic goods. The cost of the syrup and the CO2 is only about 11-12 cents, which is what a refill would cost. Restaurant estimates are that about 60% of customers refill. Even if we drop that number in half, to 30%, that means the difference to the average ticket cost is about 3-4 cents. On an $8 and change combo, that's a price difference of less than half a percent. For comparison, in most restaurants/fast food, your shrink is going to be around 10%. It is unlikely that any savings are even able to be calculated. It is likely that whatever difference there is gets swallowed up in shrink.

[Digit]

Nice. Also touching on food and money hypotheticals, I saw this amusing analysis by a NASA engineer answering someone's question regarding how much fictional character Penny from the TV show The Big Bang Theory would make.

Not sure if that link will be visible to people without Quora accounts, but here's the pith of his calculations:

($50 per table)*(15% tip)*(5 tables per hour)*(8 hours per shift)*(5 shifts per week)*(50 weeks per year) = $75,000 per year.

My understanding is that California requires a minimum salary for tipped employees of $8 an hour. That's an extra $16,000 per year.

So, at a gross income of up to $91,000 per year, Penny would be making more than Howard does...

I'm most skeptical about the likelihood of a constant flow of customers all eight hours five days a week, and of waitstaff even getting a full 40 50 weeks a year, but it was an amusing question.

[Marduk]

Not to mention how unlikely it is that one would average a 15% tip.

[mic0]

I guess Cheesecake Factory is middle-range expensive, but even so a party of 2 could easily only spend 30$? That just all around, in every aspect, seems too generous.

[TheBlackSheep]

...Really? TBR and I were just there celebrating and I spent something like $70, tip included. We both got whatever entree we wanted and we did get one slice of cheesecake to share, but we didn't have drinks or appetizers or anything. Like I said, we were celebrating, so we were a little looser with our cash than usual, but I don't think we spent double what a couple could spend...

[Marduk]

Uh, yeah, you pretty much did. Out of the 80 or so things on their menu, only two are more than $20. And the cheesecake is $8.

[mic0]

Their cheesecake is so expensive! I haven't been to the cheesecake factory in a long time, actually, so I don't remember too well.

[Emiliana]

I made my first sale on Etsy today!

....Of course, it was to my sister. But still.

[bobtheenchantedone]

Yay!

[Digit]

I bought my son a Happy Meal at McDonald's a few days ago and it came with a toy Minion character that sings for a fraction of a second if you tap it on something hard like a tabletop, but doesn't do it if you bang it against your palm. I assumed that the toy uses the piezoelectric effect.

But I noticed something interesting. My daughter had her birthday party recently and I've gotten around to popping the balloons that were in the house. Now this Minion toy was sitting on top of the fridge, and I happened to be in the kitchen about four feet away from the thing putting the balloons between my knees and jabbing them with a fork. I noticed that 100% of the time, when I popped a balloon, the toy would sing.

Either this toy has a finite internal power supply and operates on sound (seems like it would be expensive for a mass produced junk toy bound to get thrown away in short order in the vast majority of cases) or the piezo is so sensitive the air pressure wave from the balloon to the toy (transmitted through the toy's plastic shell) is enough to power the singing circuit.

[Imogen]

Grad school in three summers is hell on earth. i have so much homework i think i shall die. and i'm far from home and my puppy.

at least my boyfriend is visiting this weekend, though i'll have to do homework while he's here.

and i got an awesome new job in an awesome new district that is paying me 15 grand more than my old district. hot. dog.

[Emiliana]

Grad school in three summers is hell on earth. i have so much homework i think i shall die. and i'm far from home and my puppy.

at least my boyfriend is visiting this weekend, though i'll have to do homework while he's here.

and i got an awesome new job in an awesome new district that is paying me 15 grand more than my old district. hot. dog.

Booo homework, yay boyfriend and new job!

Are you still in the same part of Texas?

[Imogen]

Grad school in three summers is hell on earth. i have so much homework i think i shall die. and i'm far from home and my puppy.

at least my boyfriend is visiting this weekend, though i'll have to do homework while he's here.

and i got an awesome new job in an awesome new district that is paying me 15 grand more than my old district. hot. dog.

Booo homework, yay boyfriend and new job!

Are you still in the same part of Texas?

I'll be in Houston now! I'm pumped.

Back to reading until my eyeballs fall out.

[Zedability]

So my grandpa grew up in a small, very Mormon town and is a pretty typical Mormon grandpa. He has this giant picture frame in which he keeps an 8x11 picture of every single grandkid. His original plan was to put in a new picture every year and stop at high school graduation. However, my mom told me the other day that my grandpa told her that he decided to put a picture of Mr. Zed & I at our wedding. He said he realized that in doing so, he was making the decision that every single grandkid's wedding picture would get to go in the frame - straight or gay - and that he would celebrate their love equally.

I think that's one of my favourite stories to come out of my wedding so far.

[Whistler]

awww

[Emiliana]

That is excellent.

[Portia]

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-sh ... ter-agenda

I think there are many who may enjoy this (I'm more of a Good-Time Sally but consider myself an ally. :) )