The following appeared in a memorandum from the owner of Jupiter 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. on 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."
In his memorandum, the owner of Jupiter Café argues that reducing the overhead during the week and on weekends, would allow the Café to save money and thus to remain in business without firing any of the workers. Although the argument is not necessarily false, a few questions must be addressed to corroborate it.
First, the owner should check the hours in which the Café is most crowded, both during the week and on weekends. If, for example, it turns out that most customers come during the evening, the recommendation to close the Café at 4 p.m. could be outrightly rejected. More generally, decisions regarding the opening hours or any other related conditions must take into account their effect on the demand side: the customers, hence the sales, and hence the profits.
Second, it is important to check whether reducing overhead would indeed cut expenses, and to what extent. Rented utilities may have a global cost that does not depend on the Cafe's opening hours. The effect on wages is ambiguous as well: if the present workforce might demand to raise its wages to mitigate the reduction in their salaries, which would make the whole plan futile.
Third, the owner has to weigh the plan against other strategies, which may prove to be more beneficial. If the goal is to remain profitable and to stay in business, the Café may try to renew its menu to attract new customers, change its location to reduce specific operation costs, hire a younger and thus cheaper workforce, or open a Casino alongside the Café. All these strategies, if planned out accurately, may substitute the proposed plan.
Maintaining reasonable profit margins is vital to keep the business open. The ways to achieve this goal vary, however, and some of them may prove unhelpful, if not harmful in the long run. The owner of Jupiter Café has to answer the questions presented above to prove that the proposed plan would indeed help the Café achieve its goal. Otherwise, it would be better to refrain from making any changes in the opening hours.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 347 350
No. of Characters: 1634 1500
No. of Different Words: 183 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.316 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.709 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.396 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 108 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 80 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 53 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 34 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.133 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.694 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.733 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.322 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.583 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.046 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, hence, however, if, may, regarding, second, so, third, thus, well, as to, for example
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 10.0 19.6327345309 51% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 49.0 55.5748502994 88% => OK
Nominalization: 5.0 16.3942115768 30% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1700.0 2260.96107784 75% => OK
No of words: 347.0 441.139720559 79% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.89913544669 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.31600926901 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.50848951805 2.78398813304 90% => OK
Unique words: 190.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.547550432277 0.468620217663 117% => OK
syllable_count: 518.4 705.55239521 73% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => 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: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 53.8092928777 57.8364921388 93% => OK
Chars per sentence: 113.333333333 119.503703932 95% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.1333333333 23.324526521 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.13333333333 5.70786347227 107% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.187450524882 0.218282227539 86% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0587456495217 0.0743258471296 79% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0476501833861 0.0701772020484 68% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.104194293765 0.128457276422 81% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0394348138167 0.0628817314937 63% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.2 14.3799401198 92% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 56.59 48.3550499002 117% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.44 12.5979740519 91% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.46 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 81.0 98.500998004 82% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 70.83 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.25 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.