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Comment by confiscate | Hacker News Reader

what if the sales/banquet manager says Yes to the outrageous proposal, and can/will actually deliver on it because they really want your business?

e.g. they go out of their way to call their friends and family to come in 7 a.m. to help squeeze orange juice for you

then your stupid "test" just "eliminated" an outstanding provider

you are the client, can afford to play games. To you, it's just a test, just screwing around. But to the manager/provider, it's actual business, income, livelihood, food on the table for kids at home

maybe act like an Adult and not play stupid test games? It's business

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> To you, it's just a test, just screwing around.

You're not screwing around.

Your project might be full of these. It's the consultant's job to address them reasonably.

Testing people's ability to analyse what you're saying is a real need when people are willing to say "How hard can it be?" If they say yes, you'd be paying for the OJ. If you're just interested in the response, you say that afterwards. If they say "Sure thing," you can follow up with "Have you made this much OJ within that amount of time before? How would that work?" and analyse their response. If they haven't and the sales rep spends time to think, that's a good sign, too.

Another commenter compared it to a canary in a coal mine.

More likely, the guy just gets an orange squeezing machine. Every supermarket has one, he can just have 3000 oranges delivered the day before, load them in the machine at 6 and have his staff pour them out at 7. I don't see the logistical problem here.

Edit: a quick google shows that renting such a machine costs ~ USD 100.

Have you tried the automatic squeezer from the supermarket? It's so slow and it doesn't work well with more than 2 oranges at a time. It's probably gonna break apart before it finishes the first hundred.

Two or three high-speed industrial juicers would be more than enough to handle the task. I mean, really, this isn't that bad of a job for a competent banquet service. You're looking at a lot of oranges (4000 or so, about two tons) and a lot of work, but banquet catering is always a lot of work, especially for 700 people. The instance on large glasses and fresh squeezed OJ is gonna make it expensive, but if they've said it's an established tradition then it's fair to assume that they've done this before and are aware of the cost. We'd be clear about the fact it's gonna be expensive just to be sure, but would definitely say that we can get it done.

I am client but I cannot afford not to play games. I don't buy consultant time for my fun, I buy so my business earn money. For me it is also business/home/income/livelihood on line, if guy instead of going their way and deliver I might be thousands dollars back, my customers angry, and me not being able to pay my regular employees.

Then the sales/banquet manager is clueless or delusional, possibly both.

The manager can't pull 2 tons of oranges out of his ass at the last minute and they ain't going to squeeze themselves. It takes some planning and preparation.

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