Psalm 90:12
I saw this on a bumper sticker at a Home Depot, of all places. It sums up the Trust Manifesto very well.
Teach us to count our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart.
– Psalm 90:12
1 CommentEmbassy Suites
I recently stayed at an Embassy Suites hotel. I actually do not like the design
of them at all, but they have some nice features, such as free Wall Street Journals,
free Happy Hours, and free breakfasts.
When you check in, they give you a slip of paper that you can present each
day during your stay for free breakfast. I carted it around with the room key
so I wouldn’t lose it, and expected someone to ask for it at breakfast each day.
The breakfast is a buffet with many things, and made to order omelettes and
eggs, and there are various other items. It would cost about $8-9 at other hotels,
but probably costs them about $2 a person in ingredients.
On both days of my stay, workers approached me and I figured I would show
the breakfast pass. But instead, they both asked me “Can I get you more coffee?”.
That was a pleasant surprise, because it was very much a self serve buffet kind
of set up. Both days, I ended up leaving a $2 tip just for myself. Without that
extra service, I probably would have left $1, or perhaps even nothing if I cleared
the table myself, which often happens at setups like that.
The truth is that anyone could come in off the street and have a free breakfast there.
I have done that a few times on business trips where colleagues were staying in
other hotels. It wasn’t that I am cheap or dishonest, but I just wanted to meet
with my colleagues, and there was no mechanism to pay for the breakfast. So…
the obvious question for the Trust Manifesto is whether the workers should be
asking for the breakfast passes or not.
If they ask for breakfast passes, let’s imagine that they catch 10 rogues per day
like me. This prevents a loss of $2 x 10, or $20 worth of raw ingredients. But does
it really? Some of the things would keep until the next day, such as packaged
yogurts and apples and bananas. But some of it would have been thrown out anyway,
such as leftover coffee and french toast. So it is probably more like $15 worth of
loss that is prevented by asking for breakfast passes, and then $5 in losses that
would occur anyway through spoilage.
If they don’t ask for breakfast passes, but instead try to excel at customer service,
they probably earn $1-2 from each of 100 guests, or let’s say $150 in tips. This
is a decent job for just working the 5am to 9am shift, and the tips cover the cost
of the workers handsomely.
So the hotel does not incur food losses if it does not trust people, but it must pay about
$6 an hour times 4 hours times 2 people, or about $48, in order to enforce that policy
and also clean tables. (We’ll call it $52 with FICA tax.) If it does trust people, it loses
about $15 more in food than it otherwise would have, but it can pay the special minimum
wage to the servers, which is currently $2.13 an hour. The servers are happy, because they
each make $75 in tips, plus $8.52 in wages. The hotel is happy, because it pays $2.13 times
4 hours times 2 people, or $17.04 in wages…. let’s call it $20. So the hotel’s outlay is
$52 a day to not trust, and $35 a day to trust. When it trusts, it has more motivated
employees, and guests who feel trusted (and more pampered by someone bringing them
more coffee).
And the reality is that anyone who really wanted a free breakfast under the non-trusting
scheme would just say… “Oh, I forgot my pass up in my room” and the server would
say “What room number?” and the breakfast thief would say “412″, and the server
would say “Enjoy breakfast”. Trust me on this. 