The following appeared in a memorandum from the owner of the Juniper Café, a small, local coffee shop in the downtown area of a small American city:
“We must reduce overhead here at the café. Instead of opening at 6 a.m. weekdays, we will now open at 8 a.m. On weekends, we will only be open from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. The decrease in hours of operations will help save money because we won’t be paying for utilities, employee wages, or other operating costs during the hours we are closed. This is the best strategy for us to save money and remain in business without having to eliminate jobs.”
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to assess the reasonableness of both the prediction and the argument upon which it is based. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the prediction.
The memorandum issued by the owner of Juniper Cafe appears realistic at first glance. However, when one considers the reason the Cafe owner stated, and the moves the company intends to make in order to save cost of operations, it is clear that there are several reasons to repudiate the owner's claims. Essentially, the reasons provided for reducing the working hours appear unfounded and could only be accepted if some evidences are put forward.
To start with, the owner of Juniper Cafe wants us to believe that decrease in hours of operation on weekdays and weekends will allow the Cafe save money spent on utilities, wages and operating costs. However, the owner failed to state whether these expenses are in fact charged hourly. For all we know, if the costs of utilities, wages and operations of the cafe are charged weekly, monthly or yearly, then reducing the working hours will be of no effect on the cost of running the business. In fact, the Cafe would be short-changing itself in this regard.
Secondly, the author failed to provide a comparative analysis of the cost of running a similar Cafe in another area; for example, the uptown area of the American city. If the cost of running the same cafe in the uptown area is lower than that of the downtown area, then several other factors could have attributed to the difference in business costs. The uptown area may be charging fees for utilities, wages or operating costs based on the number of Cafes in the area. If Juniper Café is the only Cafe in the downtown area, and other business are just low cost in terms of what they utilize in terms of energy consumption or security, the government or third parties may be charging Juniper cafe more due to its high energy consumption, need for more security amongst other reasons.
Also, the owner of Juniper cafe stated that it would now open on weekdays at 8 a.m. as against its previous opening hour of 6 a.m. What if patronage for Juniper Cafe is highest within the hours of 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. on weekdays? Also, what if people only like to work in the evenings from 5 p.m. on weekends and Jupiter closes at 4 pm, which would not afford customers the opportunity to patronize when it best suits them? The Cafe may be losing more in terms of revenue when compared to the cost it intended to save in the first place.
Furthermore, reducing the hours may not altogether be the best strategy for Juniper Cafe if its increased cost of running the business is attributable to the tax imposition of the government in downtown area of the American city. If this is the case, the tax imposition would affect the rate of utility charged by the electrical companies, the wage demands of employees and the cost of operations. Rather than the owner of the Cafe focusing on reducing hours of operations, a more feasible strategy may be to move the business to a different location where tax rates are lower or the number of taxable activities or items are fewer.
In conclusion, the owner of Juniper cafe has identified reduction in hours of operations as the necessary strategy to reduce costs or save money for the establishment. However, while one may believe this at first glance, the reason given leaves room for assumptions. Thus, more compelling evidences need to be provided in order for the claims to be accepted.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 583 350
No. of Characters: 2681 1500
No. of Different Words: 236 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.914 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.599 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.471 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 175 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 140 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 90 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 29.15 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.607 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 1 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.339 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.594 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.128 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 21, column 360, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...in order for the claims to be accepted.
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, furthermore, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, third, thus, while, for example, in conclusion, in fact, to start with, in the first place
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 20.0 28.8173652695 69% => OK
Preposition: 89.0 55.5748502994 160% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2765.0 2260.96107784 122% => OK
No of words: 583.0 441.139720559 132% => OK
Chars per words: 4.74271012007 5.12650576532 93% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.91379618374 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.55826024362 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 245.0 204.123752495 120% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.420240137221 0.468620217663 90% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 890.1 705.55239521 126% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 16.0 8.76447105788 183% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 29.0 22.8473053892 127% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 63.0403640535 57.8364921388 109% => OK
Chars per sentence: 138.25 119.503703932 116% => OK
Words per sentence: 29.15 23.324526521 125% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.35 5.70786347227 146% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.155040459527 0.218282227539 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0567754112988 0.0743258471296 76% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0530199336138 0.0701772020484 76% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0918060025424 0.128457276422 71% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0316254678813 0.0628817314937 50% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.5 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 50.5 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.8 12.5979740519 86% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.3 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 119.0 98.500998004 121% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.6 11.1389221557 122% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.