Misplaced Efficiency

For those of you who have never gone to subway, the ordering processing consists of choosing a bread, loaf size (6″ or 12″), sandwich type, toasted or not, cheese, and final condiments. For a long time the subway near campus has epitomized the word slow. It can take as long as 10-15 minutes to finally get a sandwich and pay for an average line of between 5 and 10 people. One would be tempted to divide 10 minutes by 10 people and arrive at a minute per sandwich and conclude that this is a reasonable amount of time for a sandwich of this complexity.

This conclusion fails to take into account the four people standing in line behind the counter hired specifically so that you do not end up standing in line your entire lunch break. This past semester someone in the Subway management team (for those of you who are not in the know, subway does not operate in the normal fashion, all sandwich makers are equally involved in the “management” of the restaurant) became aware of the problem.

Taking in to account the genius of minimum wage employees everywhere this employee attempted to employ the time saving technique of block processing. Applied to subway this means that the first person will start 5 sandwiches at a time before they are allowed to move onto the condiment step. Unfortunately for those of those of us who get to experience this first hand this now means that those 10-15 minutes of waiting are now experienced by our sandwiches. What this employee forgot to take into account is that working in blocks only works if there are lots of repeated motions. For example if everyone has the same cheese, one block can be picked up and the slices can be laid on all the sandwiches. At Subway everyone has a custom sandwich; this means the number of repeated motions is at a minimum, i.e. a different cheese for every sandwich.

To further add insult to injury, the person standing 5th in line does not expect to give his order until he at least reaches the counter, thus the conversation is generally of the form:

Subway: What kind of bread?
Customer: Looking around blankly.
Subway: What kind of bread?
Customer: Huh? Me?
Subway: Yeah
Customer: Ummm, ummm, just a second
…Several minutes later…
Customer: I guess I’ll have white.
Subway: 6 inch?
Customer: What are the option?
Subway:6 inch or footlong?
Customer: Oh….I guess I’ll have a footlong.
Subway: What kind of sandwich?
Customer: What? Are there more than one…..

And where in the world is the Swiss cheese?

A Question of Ethics

I recently had to undergo an online ethics training program.  The question that always gets me is the if it is okay to accept a gift of over $100 in value. 

The one question as a door prize you win a Nintendo Wii?  Can you go keep or at the very least give it to a family member as a gift? 

According to the ethics class neither is acceptable.  So where is the line?  If the retail value of an item is over $100 can you not accept it?  What about if you received an item such that there was a store that charged over $100 for the item, but was available on sale at another store for $99 is this okay?

I am reminded of time working at Burger King.  According to company policy we were not allowed to accept gratuity.  First off, there are not that many people who would ever tip you to begin with, however the 16 year old girl drive through workers managed to make out quite well.  But how do you stop someone from accepting gratuity who is making minimum wage.  You fire them?  Big deal its not like they had any benefits anyways. 

So the same situation applies to me, I have no athority in my position as a TA to affect University in any way.  So if Dell wanted to give me a brand new laptop, I am expected to turn in down.  I don’t why Dell would do so, but as I can’t give any University business to Dell anyways I don’t see how this is unethical in anyway. 

Its another case of legalism, its hard to define a small region that is bad, so we just put everything in a larger category as “illegal”. 

Please understand, if a student wanted to give me a gift with the hope of gaining favor in terms of grading, I would happily accept the gift and then grade normally.  Some would ask, “How can you be sure you aren’t biased?”  The answer is simple, I don’t know the names of any of my students so when I am grading exams I have no idea who they belong to.

TNT: How to Spot a Terrorist

According to a newsweek article (http://www.newsweek.com/id/216401?GT1=43002) terrorists share 3 common traits:

1. Testosterone
2. a Narrative fantasy
3. desire to make Theater

Notice that they made a fun acronym that doesnn’t completely work in order to spell TNT?  What I find interesting is that there is a 4th characteristic that most suicide bombers seem to share.  (At this point if you haven’t read the article please read it now and see if you can identify the characterist)

Hint: Every example bomber in the article possesses it

 

Answer:  They’re are Muslim.

Now before everyone gets upset with me I want to play a little logic game.  If all birds are blue, and all birds are mammels.  Then are all blue mammels birds?

The answer of course is no?  The same applies to Muslims, while Muslims are terrorists there certainly seems to be a large sub-category of this group is so.  So in the logical world, how to find terrorists

1. Do they possess the TNT characteristics?  Yes, then check 2.
2. Are they Muslim?

If both 2 and 3 are true, what do you?  Well almost nothing because in this country everyone enjoys equal protection under the law, so until they actually do something illegal you can only pay closer attention to them.  If you are like most people and mostly mind your own this means that your suspensions will be confirmed after a bomb goes off.

Regular Business Hours

This semester a new trend has developed, scheduling required class times and meetings at exactly the same time.  Normally I try to prevent this by voicing my input in the process of choosing the time and day.  For obvious reasons the only person who knows my schedule is me.

This year I missed the first week of classes, but informed all affected parties not a week before but 2 months ahead of time so as to guarantee my opinions could be heard sooner rather than later.  Unfortunately, this warning was largely ignored, the result “make-up” classes for my one class have been scheduled for Mondays at 6pm.  (For those of you who don’t know a “make-up” class occurs when the professor can not make a class and therefore schedules an additional period of riveting interaction.)  The class I TA for also set their meeting time to Mondays starting at 5:30pm.

Its important to get the material from the make-up classes as it is covered in the homework.  This shouldn’t be a big deal as most classes the TA meetings rarely have much to cover and should be done in a half hour.  Yet somehow what should happen doesn’t occur as even after I informed the Professor of these conflicts he has no problem continuing to start length and then proceeding to spend 15 minutes joking around.

Every so often we have  a “long meeting” by long I mean from 5:30 to 8:00.  Some people reading this are thinking, “I have meetings that long all the time”.  Well sure, hopefully those at least are during business hours and you get paid for your pain.

My question remains, why does everyone in Academia consider regular business hours to be 10 to 2:00 AM?

Overstating the Obvious

This week the college students are moving back in to town.  The local paper wrote an article to convince all of us how old we are.  This year’s college freshmen were born in 1991.  The list of things these student experience all their lives…

1. Never used a card catalog
2. Always had available-Cookie Dough Ice Cream
3. Never had a President who did snuff…(Just except for the man currently occupying the White House)

I took the liberty of adding a few to the list

1. Never had a President who did snuff
2. Never had slaves
3. Never bothered to use the card catalog (Instead asked a librarian to do it for you)
4. Never fought the British
5. Never fought the French
6. Always had guns available
7. Weren’t allowed in the Garden of Eden

Now looking at the updated list everything seems to apply to everyone born after 1930.  For those of you who just made it to college, if you don’t know the items on the list it means you don’t belong in college.

Just a Little Confused

I was recently swimming in a “unnamed” motel’s pool.  It was a very nice motel in most respects — nice rooms, air conditioner, bathroom.  The room and all the furniture were in nice, new condition.  The only problem was that the managers seem to have a little misconception about what is involved in running a motel.

Case 1:  The pool area had an outside door connecting it.  At most motels this door is either left open to reduce the humidity and make it a more pleasurable swimming experience.  In this case the door was damaged in some way, and thus did not work.  In order to combat the negative effects of this, a screen and been placed over the door.  Unfortunately, this is a case of good intentions, poorly executed.  This was because the screen did not completely cover the doorway nor did it in any way seal the opening.  The result: bugs had absolutely no problem navigating around the screen and promptly drowning in the pool (at least with us in it).

This reminds by a story told by my Oma (Grandmother in German).  After World War II the Russians were able to take whatever they wanted in Eastern Germany.  A particular group of Russians discovered the joy of running water.  By turning on a handle, water comes out of the faucet.  In awe of this device they were determined to procure one of these marvelous inventions for their own residences.  Forcibly removing the faucet from the wall, they mounted it to the walls of their own homes.

Back to topic.

Case 2:  As a new motel certain furniture items are required.  In  the bedroom: beds, bed sheets, bedroom nightstands…  For the pool: the pool itself, pool chairs, and of course a pool table.  Next to the table was a nice stand holding the various pool sticks.  Needless to say “hot tub” doesn’t fit the necessary requirements for the “pool” area.

I’m just glad the decided against putting in the car pool.

Preparing to Move

I recently was introduced to a new perspective on moving.  My roommate just moved out and showed me the possibilities.

To help with the move he invited his brother down two days before.  One would think it might be a good idea to begin packing things up at this time.  Apparently the modern approach is to go out to the store and buy two cases of beer and party up.  That way the next day rather than just feeling tired from moving all day one can also add a hangover to the mix.  It’s the new way to really “experience” moving.  After waking up at noon the following day, they finally began packing.  This also consisted of running the dish washer and washing all of his clothes.  While I can appreciate that it’s a good idea to move clean items, I tend to believe that tasks like that should have been taken care of earlier.  Then after not completely packing his brother’ car, my roommate took a break till the next day as his brother drove home.

The following day an unfortunate thought begins to pervade his consciousness, “perhaps I should have put more stuff in my brother’s car, because I don’t have enough room.”  I don’t complain; it just adds to my stash.  I’m particularly thrilled about the practically new large duffel bag that was left behind.

I have the opposite philosophy; I try to grab every last item.  Last year when I moved I became upset after having to leave 6 rolls of toilet paper behind.  I actually moved my TV several days before to a friend’s place for the summer because it was too big to transport.

On retrospect it’s completely true…the modern approach to life is to not plan, don’t save, just think about today; or the philosophy that I tend to encounter more and more often, “Don’t think at all.”

Race Day

This morning I left my apartment to wait for the bus.  The MTD has a nice web page that give up to the minute times till the bus gets to a stop.  I allowed myself six minutes to grab my stuff, lock the door and walk to my apartment.  Today was a particularly momentous day because the reason for my departure was a 9:00 AM exam.

As I was walking at about 3/4 of the way to stop I realized that I had forgot my calculator.  Due to the nature of the corresponding homework for this exam, the error of not bringing a calculator to the exam could be disastrous.  As only a couple of minutes had passed I ran as fast I could back to my apartment grabbed my calculator and ran back to the bus stop.  There was not more 1 minute that the bus stop was in view.

Now normally a bus stopping takes a minimum of 2 minutes between stopping and allowing everyone to board.  (My stop is especially crowded normally at this time.)  Since I was only out of sight for a minute and there was a man at the stop who also appeared to be waiting I assumed that the bus had not come yet.  This was especially easy to conclude as at no time was there any sighting of the bus, not coming or leaving the stop.

After about 10 minutes of waiting I concluded that I must of missed the bus.  Coming in late for the exam could be just as bad as not having the calculator.  So while keeping an eye behind me I sprinted the mile and half to class.  Unfortunately it was a lab day so my attire consisted of long pants, necessary for working in a clean room.  After making to class only 5 minutes late.  I grabbed a test and sat down.  As I attempted to finish the exam with limited time left, my sweat dripped on to the paper helping to obscure my answers and making clear writing very difficult.

Not exactly how I intended to start the day.

Predicting the Market

I don’t find this topic that blog worthy, but I’ve been told by other sources that this is the sort of thing that people like to read about.

Last weekend I needed to make a stop at the local Walmart.  (A Super Walmart in fact).  So I was down a quarter of a tank of gas and the Walmart gas station had gas 2 cents cheaper than the rest of the town.  So I remarked to my fiance that gas was going to go up so since I was already here I might as well fill up my tank.

Upon leaving Walmart after not more than 30 minutes of shopping I looked up to find that the price of gas had risen.

If only I had invested some real money into gas.  Then that couple of cents would have meant more than the dime I saved.

Washing Machine Etiquette

I remember being told stories by an elementary teacher of how when they went to college they were able to charge their roommates exorbitant amount to do their laundry for them.  This is not due to laziness on the roommate’s part or even a lack of time.  They simply not understand the basics of washing machine usage similar to how an older individual might not understand the Internet.

Today I seem to encounter similar problems in our society, but not from a lack of knowing how to use things, but I think more as a result of not knowing the proper etiquette and thus offending others.  (I believe this is unintentional, but I could be mistaken.

These faux pas span a vast array of areas.  My least favorite are those involving the bathroom.  Students who have no shame in continuing the conversation while entering the stall.  Another favorite is walking into the bathroom to find that all the urinals are in a desperate need to flushing.  The problem has gotten so bad that signs have now been posted.  “Please Flush When Done”.

I am getting off topic however.  The latest to come to my attention is washing machines.  For those of us who share a machine with others we realize that the person doing their laundry right before us is not always prompt in removing their laundry from the washer and moving it to the dryer.  Depending on our time constraint we may save time by moving their clothes from the washer to the top of the dryer, thus allowing us full access to both machines.  Now I am willing to cede several hours for a roommate who I share washing machines with, even days as I am normally not in that big of a hurry.  My roommate tends to normally leave his clothes sitting around for a while.  This time he had clothes in both machines.  A set of wet clothes and a set of dry clothes.  I don’t even know what to do with this.  Where do you put all the clothes, to use the machines yourself?  This state affairs was not a temporary position, my roommate had left for a 4 day weekend.

So next time you are washing your clothes.  Please finish the job.  Even if you don’t share it just makes sense so your clothes aren’t all wrinkled.