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It reminds me of the orange juice test. You organize an annual convention for hundreds of people. You tell the banquet manager of the hotel you are considering
by Monkeyget 12y ago
It reminds me of the orange juice test.
You organize an annual convention for hundreds of people.
You tell the banquet manager of the hotel you are considering that the morning breakfast must include a large glass of freshly squeezed orange juice for everyone of the attendees. It must be squeezed no more than two hours before the breakfast.
It is not possible to do so. Squeezing that much orange in much a short amount of time would be prohibitively expensive.
If the manager says yes he is either lying or incompetent and you'd better find someone else who will tell you it's not possible.
- majc2 12y agoI first heard this in "The secrets of consulting" by Gerald Weinberg. The fuller version is that the manger is only allowed to say 'yes' if they tell you there is a cost associated with it (i.e. it isn't free).
- raverbashing 12y agohttp://www.amazon.com/Commercial-Orange-Squeezer-Machine-replacement/dp/B0068OK27S http://www.amazon.com/Commercial-Orange-Squeezer-Machine-rep...
- ryanburk 12y agoif you go with an amazon solution, it should absolutely be mechanical turk! https://aws.amazon.com/mturk/ https://aws.amazon.com/mturk/
- newaccountfool 12y agoThat would work, can do 7 glasses a min. That means means 420 glasses an hour, which would be 840 glasses in the two hours. The question was about hundreds of guests and not thousands so your operating at the top range of that. Definitely possible!
- gambiting 12y agoEven if it was about thousands of guests, you can buy more than one machine. The only question is, how much is the client willing to pay?
- Tyrannosaurs 12y agoLarge commercial hotel. It's not impossible they don't have this sort of equipment already. The problem with checks like this is that you need to be intimately aware of the capabilities of an organisation to know whether it's reasonable or not. As people who work with technology know, things that seem impossible to the uninitiated can be remarkably trivial. We should probably assume that others have similarly impressive capabilities in areas we don't understand. The advantage of the Van Halen test over this is that it's simple for everyone. This seems needlessly "clever" and is as a result wrong...
- delinka 12y agoIt is possible to do. He just needs to hire enough people. And presumably he should pass along the cost.
- watwut 12y agoIt is perfectly possible. One hotel I have been in had machine that produced freshly squeezed orange juice. Breakfast were available for few hours and anyone could take as much as he wanted. It never run out.