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The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

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Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#131

Post by jhbadger »

ashtonkem wrote: post #104
Zenbit_UX wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got weird friends, no one's ever had to ask or bribe me, I would just offer to help. In turn I'd also be uncomfortable asking others to do manual labor for me, if they didn't offer when I said I was moving I wouldn't ask. Buying them supper after would be a given, no bribe required.

“I’ll buy you pizza for helping me move” is an extremely common social interaction, to the point of being a trope. It’s not a bribe, it’s an acknowledgement that helping somebody move is a huge amount of work and some token of appreciation is wise. GP doesn’t have weird friends.

And when I was TA grading exams, the professor would buy us all pizza as well. It was technically unnecessary as grading was part of why were being paid as TAs, but it was a nice touch and put us all in a better mood and with a favorable view of the professor.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#132

Post by jeromegv »

save_ferris wrote: post #23
RandallBrown wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A park in Indiana, Holiday World, did something sorta the opposite. They figured out how much the average guest paid for drinks, then raised the ticket prices that much but made all drinks free in the park. It was a huge success. People expect ticket prices to go up occasionally and they expect to be gouged for drinks. By getting "free" drinks, it felt like a huge value. (At least for me when I visited.) I bet it mad…

Ive been saying for years that airlines should do this. Add the price of an alcoholic beverage to everyone's ticket and then give those who want one a "free" drink. I never understood why they opted to go with ruthless cuts and declining customer experience.

For a while, Porter Airlines (Canada) would offer free coffee + free cookies out of their terminal in Toronto. They would also offer you a free beer (a full 500ml, not the 341ml one) on the flight if this was an afternoon/evening flight. I feel that a lot of their expansion was just the word of mouth "OH AND THEY GIVE YOU FREE COOKIES". Their flight might have been a bit more expensive, but the amount of good will they got from those free items was huge and for a while Porter was really what people preferred.

Then they sold their terminal and started leasing it, and now suddenly, no more free coffee and free cookies. I don't know if the free beer is still around but for a while we had everyone complain on how "they no longer have free cookies". And then we just stopped hearing about it because people just didn't care about Porter anymore, you would just get the cheapest flight and that would typically not be them and it's not like they were offering something special anymore.

It looks to me that this was probably not a super huge expense that was probably giving them a much higher ROI than the pure $ value of what it cost them.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#133

Post by ChuckMcM »

hhmc wrote: post #125
ChuckMcM wrote: post #117

This is a good cautionary tale and one I've seen played out in the tech industry with food. Even in the 80's it wasn't uncommon for a tech company to have a "beer bust" on Friday's where drinks and snacks were served as a social gathering for employees at the end of the work week. It was a turning point in employee relations when the VP of HR at Sun cancelled the weekly beer bust. Similarly at Google when they decide…

Your comment about the hidden impact of cancelling snacks reminds me of this article: https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...

Yup, and to Steve's point "The sodas were just the wake-up call.", it was more than a wake up call. As the paper explained, to stop sharing food with someone forces them to re-evaluate their relationship to you. They can't help it, it's thousands of years of behavioral training that kicks in and says, "This person no longer likes/trusts me, what should I do now?"

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#134

Post by crankylinuxuser »

gav wrote: post #119
ooobit2 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an SE/SO professional, can I rant here for a moment? Marketing and Product rag on Sales a lot for discounting. Nevermind the fact that we own the touchpoints with an account, so it only makes sense that we'd know what any individual account needs. I've had this issue with Marketing and Product professionals since I started in Sales, and even more-so when I took over Sales Enablement and Sales Ops. For one, prici…

I've been on both sides so I understand your perspective. Everyone wants to sell on _value_ and in an ideal world you could go up the food chain and say, "hey, if we spend $10,000 on this, we save $100,000 in employee hours". That should be the easiest decision in the world, especially if you could come back in a year and figure out it was really $105,000. However budgeting in just about any organization I've been in…

> However budgeting in just about any organization I've been involved in doesn't work like that. You ask for $10,000 and there's no budget for it. Even if there is, there's no guarantee that next year you're not going to have to "tighten belts" and "sharpen pencils".

So.. a bigger question. Why doesn't budgeting work like this?

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#135

Post by conradfr »

blululu wrote: post #16

Interestingly enough I used to work at a company where the one any only benefit was occasional doughnuts on Friday (we did not get health insurance/dental/vision/retirement). And honestly we would all be pissed on the days when Doughnut Friday was cancelled.

Reminds me of this story I read a long time ago on HN and which is on topic for this thread.

https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...

edit: I see it has already been posted.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#136

Post by boulos »

karaterobot wrote: post #69

I didn't know about the Red Cross and its donuts. The example I've always used for this is helping a friend move. If the friend asks "hey, will you help me move? I'm buying pizza and beer afterwards!" I will more than likely say yes, even though I can buy my own pizza and beer. If they instead say "hey, will you help me move? I'll pay you $21.58 for your time," I'd probably bristle. Even though that might be the equi…

In behavioral economics that’s sometimes referred to as “social norms versus market norms” [first useful link, 1].

The example given (I think it’s via Ariely) is that you wouldn’t pay your friend to have cooked you dinner. This is the same thing: there’s social contract value in helping your friend out, and they’re showing appreciation with a token. In fact, if you friend offers you more money than the pizza and beer, you are likely to be insulted by the lowball offer, since you now evaluate the suggestion in terms of work for hire via market norms.

Social norms are so powerful though, that even if the friend offers you higher than your market rate, it’s still not worth it to take it, as it would shift your relationship (with lifetime value X) from a social one to a commercial one. Usually when people say “humans are irrational” they should be saying “people have complex utility / reward functions”!

[1] https://www.behavioraleconomics.com/resources/introduction-b...

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#137

Post by swyx »

gav wrote: post #119
ooobit2 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an SE/SO professional, can I rant here for a moment? Marketing and Product rag on Sales a lot for discounting. Nevermind the fact that we own the touchpoints with an account, so it only makes sense that we'd know what any individual account needs. I've had this issue with Marketing and Product professionals since I started in Sales, and even more-so when I took over Sales Enablement and Sales Ops. For one, prici…

I've been on both sides so I understand your perspective. Everyone wants to sell on _value_ and in an ideal world you could go up the food chain and say, "hey, if we spend $10,000 on this, we save $100,000 in employee hours". That should be the easiest decision in the world, especially if you could come back in a year and figure out it was really $105,000. However budgeting in just about any organization I've been in…

right. the money has to come from somewhere. you dont get an "employee hour rebate" from employee hours saved. maybe you should, but in reality it doesnt happen. anyway employee productivity claims necessarily get taken with a huge grain of salt. need to hit people over the head with the benefits.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#138

Post by SirSavary »

Zenbit_UX wrote: post #89
karaterobot wrote: post #69

I didn't know about the Red Cross and its donuts. The example I've always used for this is helping a friend move. If the friend asks "hey, will you help me move? I'm buying pizza and beer afterwards!" I will more than likely say yes, even though I can buy my own pizza and beer. If they instead say "hey, will you help me move? I'll pay you $21.58 for your time," I'd probably bristle. Even though that might be the equi…

You got weird friends, no one's ever had to ask or bribe me, I would just offer to help. In turn I'd also be uncomfortable asking others to do manual labor for me, if they didn't offer when I said I was moving I wouldn't ask. Buying them supper after would be a given, no bribe required.

I've always interpreted it as a "reason" to hang out, or a politeness thing. It also makes it clear that your buddy doesn't plan to shoo you out of their new apartment once you're done the job.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#139

Post by rconti »

blakesterz wrote: post #66
afterburner wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was there something wrong with the way the exit survey was asked/written? Because that is remarkable. Was maybe part of the issue that people leaving when the exit survey was being run (at "night") not representative of the visitors as a whole?

Great questions, I wondered how they got it so wrong, I still wonder how they got it so wrong. It never occurred to me it may have been time of day they asked the questions.

"Would you pay extra for the water park" at the end of a fun day is a proxy for "did you appreciate/receive value from this thing you just finished enjoying?"

Whereas, on a random Tuesday, announcing: "Want to come to the water park? PAY US MORE MONEY." Is a proxy for "we're taking something away from your admission ticket and trying to backdoor a new charge".

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#140

Post by bnjms »

_bxg1 wrote: post #51
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A similar thing happens in the podcasting space. It's a pity it's still quite inconvenient to make micropayments. If I could make a single click to pay a penny for access to a single article, I imagine I'd do so frequently.

This is what the Brave browser is attempting to do, with mixed success

Do they have a plugin for Firefox? No way that strategy works without plugins for other browsers. —- I hope they succeed.
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