The Business

From the perspective of a restaurant, bathrooms are a problem.

Financially, they have significant costs and no revenue. Customers who come to a restaurant expect to be able to use the bathrooms for free! There’s immediate and strong pushback against any revenue creation paradigm. What’s more, bathrooms invoke costs (space, supplies, water and lights, maintenance, decor, etc.) and cause staffing problems. Someone has to clean the bathroom, no one wants to do it, and that’s a significant issue in the modern era of labor shortages.

Therefore the best business decision is to remove bathrooms from all sit-down restaurants.

Tell me if you can see any problem with this plan.

This is how tech companies view customer service.

Fiction

Writing fiction makes me feel like an evil chessmaster, sitting in the dark. On publishing day I reveal my plots and stratagems, and either conquer the world (or a few readers) or die trying.

Also, just finished a reread of the Return of the King, capping my reread of Tolkien’s big 4. It’s better than I remember. The parts I remember disliking (trouble in the Shire, slow ending, etc.) are actually fitting. The general mood, one of a world fading, I still passionately disagree with, but the book itself is better than I recalled.