One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories(41)
The single biggest one-time expense that I anticipate would be the construction and installation of a waist-high circuitous conveyor belt that would deliver cups of coffee from one side of the room to the other at a speed of four miles per hour, allowing proper time for me to retrieve and spill coffee cups on one end of the room while an assistant restocks and refills the coffee cups at the other end of the conveyor belt. I would estimate $14,400 for construction and installation (this is a ballpark estimate because none of the custom-conveyor companies I consulted understood the nature of the request) which can be amortized over the length of the enterprise.
2. STAFF
I would require one full-time assistant dedicated to preparing the next batch of coffee while I am busy spilling the current one and one additional full-time assistant simultaneously dedicated to cleaning the debris of the previous group of spills while I am on to the next. This system of cleanliness and order will help provide a situation of maximum safety, sanitation, and efficiency, as well as maintaining the all-important positive psychological environment. (Once again, mental health is an issue of paramount importance to me.)
Alternatively, I could conceivably enlist two unpaid interns who would receive college credit instead of monetary payment, but then I’d have to spend time writing their evaluations: time I could have spent spilling coffee.
I am presuming minimum wage (and would in fact become very angry if one of these employees asked for more than minimum wage for this job, likely out of proportion, especially given the stressful work enviroment I anticipate for this enterprise). Staffing would come to a total of $116 per day.
3. MISCELLANEOUS & UNANTICIPATED COSTS
Rubber pants and other similar miscellaneous expenses too numerous and minor to list in full detail here should add up to no more than $1000 per year.
Cleaning materials when purchased in bulk from Costco should average no more than $50 per day.
Theft of company materials is likely to run as high as $1000 per year. (While I believe in paying minimum wage, I don’t expect my workers to like me for it.)
Psychological counseling to handle the effects of devoting my life’s work to this crushingly bizarre and isolating activity of no relevant value or connection to the wider world should run me approximately $750 per week.
4. NET INCOME
Finally, the fun part: time to knock these babies down and watch the nickels come pouring in!
Assuming that at full operational capacity with a functional 4-mph conveyor belt that averages one spill of coffee per two seconds over the course of an eight-hour workday, we’re looking at approximately 1800 spills per hour and 14,400 spills per workday.
At 5 cents per spilled cup of coffee, that comes to $720 per day, or $3600 per week, or $180,000 per year, allowing for two weeks of vacation per year, during which I envision myself going somewhere calm and cold.
5. TOTAL PROFITS
The total cost per spill associated with this process comes to 2.9 cents per cup, or $417.60 per day, or $104,400 per year. The remaining expenses total $52,232.00 annually.
These figures combined, and then subtracted from the previously calculated $180,000 net income from spilling approximately 3,600,000 cups of coffee per year at a compensation of five cents per spill, leave me with a total profit of $23,368 per year, before taxes.
6. CONCLUSION
So, maybe I wouldn’t be rich, but I’d get by.
A Good Problem to Have
When we were in the fourth grade, an old man burst into our classroom one day waving his rumpled little plaid arms and screaming. It might have been adorable if we had been old enough to find older people adorable, and also if it hadn’t been a little bit scary.
“Stop! Is he saying anything about trains?! About train times?! Stop!”
Our teacher, Mr. Hunt, had a mustache and an inner calmness about him, and we never noticed that then he must have only been in his twenties. He put his arm lightly across the old man’s back and led him to a big wooden chair in the corner of our class, a chair that none of us ever actually sat in but that might look to a visitor like a seat of honor.
“How can we help you?” asked Mr. Hunt.
“Are you asking them questions about trains?” asked the old man.
“No,” said Mr. Hunt. “We’re talking about geometry today. Can I help you with something? Would you like a glass of water?”
Mr. Hunt had an accent that my parents identified as a working-class one from Dorchester, Massachusetts. Some of us thought it made him sound cool, and some of us thought it made him sound like an old lady. Either one may have been why the old man seemed to calm down a little bit whenever Mr. Hunt spoke.
“Did he ever,” exhaled the old man, who now rotated toward the class from the chair as if he were an amateur actor with stage fright in a community musical who was nonetheless following through on the play’s plan to break the fourth wall, “ask you about trains? About trains leaving stations at different times?”
“Yes, I have,” said Mr. Hunt.
“What textbook did you use? Problems and Solutions Four?”
“I got it from the internet.”
A few of us gasped and then realized that Mr. Hunt didn’t seem embarrassed about this, and then realized that we, too, got a lot of good stuff from the internet. Why shouldn’t Mr. Hunt?