The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake
House restaurants.
"Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants
throughout the southwestern United States. Only about 2 percent of customers have
complained, indicating that 98 people out of 100 are happy with the change.
Furthermore, many servers have reported that a number of customers who ask for
butter do not complain when they are given margarine instead. Clearly, either these
customers cannot distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to
refer to either butter or margarine. Thus, to avoid the expense of purchasing butter
and to increase profitability, the Happy Pancake House should extend this
cost-saving change to its restaurants in the southeast and northeast as well."
Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could
rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly
account for the facts presented in the argument.
The business manager suggested replacing butter with margarine based on several explanations, however, he/she fails to consider other possible alternatives.
Firstly, the manager assumes most clients are satisfied with the change simply because they did not criticize, but could it be that the Happy Pancake House restaurant is a high-end restaurant typically located in the most expensive downtown area and its potential clients are usually self-aware and elegant people who do not want to bother themselves getting into a serious argument? Or the Happy Pancake House restaurant is an Asian style restaurant and its target audiences are generally shy immigrants who are not used to express their opinions in public?
Besides, he/she states that clients cannot tell the difference between butter and margarine since many servers have reported lots of customers who originally asked for butter did not complain upon receiving margarine instead. However, it is highly possible that those reported servers did not tell the truth due to the fear of not performing well in the job thus exposing themselves to layoff risk. On the other hand, clients might have already noticed the change and felt uncomfortable about it but they are caring enough to think there might be a temporary shortage for butter, which does not imply they are perfectly fine with this adjustment.
Finally, the manager mentions the replacement would be able to bring profitability because it helps reduce the cost of purchasing butter in the southwestern restaurants thus should be enforced in the southeast and northeast branches as well. However, what works in one area does not imply in another. He/she fails to examine the butter price throughout different places. Some restaurants might be closer to the origin that produces butter, hence cut down the cost resulted from transportation, which in turn causes lower price than purchasing margarine.
Apart from that, he/she also overlooks other possibilities such as eating habits might vary from place to place, people who live in the southeast or northeast might prefer butter over margarine thus willing to pay higher expense in order to fit their eating habits. In such a case, changing butter might bring discomfort hence decreasing the customer retention, which severely affects the profitability.
Therefore, it is better to take above alternatives into consideration before actually executing the change or pay close attention to this adjustment to see whether it goes well throughout different areas in the following months.
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, besides, but, finally, first, firstly, hence, however, if, look, so, therefore, thus, well, apart from, such as, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2170.0 2260.96107784 96% => OK
No of words: 400.0 441.139720559 91% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.425 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.472135955 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.75941569902 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 227.0 204.123752495 111% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.5675 0.468620217663 121% => OK
syllable_count: 671.4 705.55239521 95% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 3.0 8.76447105788 34% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 13.0 19.7664670659 66% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 30.0 22.8473053892 131% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 82.1451306238 57.8364921388 142% => OK
Chars per sentence: 166.923076923 119.503703932 140% => OK
Words per sentence: 30.7692307692 23.324526521 132% => OK
Discourse Markers: 11.2307692308 5.70786347227 197% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.113733608299 0.218282227539 52% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0384158915244 0.0743258471296 52% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0326767263808 0.0701772020484 47% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.058349764962 0.128457276422 45% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0305224487354 0.0628817314937 49% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 19.5 14.3799401198 136% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 32.57 48.3550499002 67% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 16.2 12.197005988 133% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.75 12.5979740519 117% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.43 8.32208582834 113% => OK
difficult_words: 109.0 98.500998004 111% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 18.0 12.3882235529 145% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.0 11.1389221557 126% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.