Note to my wife’s boss
By Thoreau
If you have 100 customers, and if 4 of those 100 customers upgrade their purchase to include an item that the store is pushing, that means that my wife has gotten 4% of her customers to upgrade, above her 3% quota.
Yes, it is true that 4 out of 100 is 1 out of 25, but that doesn’t mean it’s 2.5%. Otherwise, the person who sold 0 out of 100 would be getting 1 in infinity and that would mean the person with zero is infinitely better.
Speaking of which: Jim, could you double my pay for blogging here?
UPDATE: I just learned that my wife actually got out a calculator and showed her boss the result, at which point the boss took the calculator, did something with it, and got it to display 2.5%.
Comment by Fraud Guy —
March 26, 2008 @ 9:21 pm
Obviously, the boss is applying the third term in the following series:
“There are lies, there are damned lies, and then there are statistics.”
Possibly in support of the Golden Rule:
“He who has the gold makes the rules.”
Comment by Kevin Carson —
March 27, 2008 @ 3:11 am
Seriously, dude, I hope your wife’s boss has a good health plan for that cranio-rectal impaction of his.
Comment by fishbane —
March 27, 2008 @ 4:16 am
1/25==.025? Srlsy? I already know the answer, but in the interest of fairness, that company either desperately needs to hire more numerate managers, or drastically improve the expectations for the math knowledge of the people who, you know, are making them money. That’s such a transparent cheat that I wouldn’t trust an employee who fell for it to sweep for me.
I seem to recall doing that math in about the 4th grade, but it has been a long time, so I may be off by a year or two.
Comment by Barry —
March 27, 2008 @ 9:29 am
thoreau: “Speaking of which: Jim, could you double my pay for blogging here? ”
Mr. Thoreau, we have modified your pay according to your request, which was approved by Mr. Henley.
Expect *two* checks to be [eternally] in the mail.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 27, 2008 @ 12:22 pm
My wife didn’t fall for it. But she couldn’t do anything about it either.
Maybe she can tell the district manager the next time he visits the store, but that’s always politically dangerous.
And yes, she is sending out resumes.