"Paul F. has noted a strong correlation between high payment rates and an office where people seem to like their boss and their work."
I wonder if this could be a way for companies to figure out (surreptitiously) how managers are doing: provide such a bagel service to each department, and see where the theft rate is the highest. Of course, it has to be done completely incognito, otherwise the managers would make sure that the cash box is stuff full of cash....
Given that he also noticed a correlation with weather, overall economic conditions, global events and myriad other factors, you'd need to work very very hard to isolate only what was down to the manager.
Plus most people respond primarily to their direct manager and most direct managers have relatively few reports (typically less than 20). Statistically that's going to make it hard to find significant findings given the variation that is normally seen.
Or think of a team which, for no reason of the manager's making had one inherently dishonest employee who steals all the time. That manager is on -5% before he does a thing - a big disadvantage given the variations being discussed.
EDIT: Not to mention the fact that this is one of his "intuitive conclusions" - which I'm reading as he has no solid data to support the level of liking / not liking their boss, or possibly whether it was even true.
Given that he found a correlation between company size and industry you'd need to find a few companies that matched in those regards too as well as geography (weather) and other things.
Oh, and this wasn't something he had any data to support, it was just something he felt was probably true.
Speaking as a manager, I'd like not to be fired on the hunch of a bagel salesman / economist if that's OK.
I wonder if this could be a way for companies to figure out (surreptitiously) how managers are doing
You can get a gut feeling by examining the coffee mess.
If you find that people are leaving less than one cup or less in the bottom of the pot, and it's not yet lunch, that's a sign you've got morale problems.
Happy people make more coffee for their peers. Unhappy people take a cup for themselves and let someone else do it.
This was a very interesting article. I always find experiments involving honor systems very fascinating. The bus system in Germany and some parts of the Boston T (the trolleys when they are overground) are basically honor systems. In Bonn, Germany people are very particular about paying the fare. In Boston, not so much.
Rome has(had?) an honour system for public transport too. We didn't realise that no one ever pays unless they see inspectors getting on the bus. Lots of people would leap up and punch their biglietti when we punched ours because they assumed we had seen some inspectors. I couldn't work out what was going on until I read about it in the Time Out guide which explained that almost no one pays :-)
London had exactly the same system and the same fare evasion problem on the high traffic bendy bus routes. These routes were always overcrowded probably because of the number of unrecorded passengers using them. They withdrew these buses and replaced them with ones which take longer to board partly because of the fare evasion and partly because a sort of bizarre bus xenophobia (hatred of a foreign european style of bus) inspired by the Evening Standard which resulted in an election promise by mayor Boris to get rid of them.
I can't speak for their motivation, but the what the Evening Standard (and Metro et al) printed was not related to the origins of the bus. They claimed they were dangerous to other road users. TfL disputes this.
Solving the overcrowding issue is more complicated than building higher capacity buses - you have to think about the speed of boarding, route layout, speed of navigating London's congested streets, fare evasion and more. In some places, the bus stops allow for two bendy buses or 3-4 regular buses to board at once, which means faster boarding on regular buses during peak times.
The new Routemasters, with 3 doors and 2 staircases, might prove to reduce overcrowding despite their lower capacity.
There was plenty of research behind introducing bendy buses. The main argument being that they transit the route faster overall because they have a much shorter dwell time at stops. The introduction of bendy buses was a rational evidence based decision, the campaign against them was mostly emotional hubris, which resulted in them being replaced early at vast expense to the taxpayer. The main reasonable complaint against them was that you were more likely to have to stand up, but you often couldn't even get on the bus (e.g's routes 73,38) before they were introduced so I don't know what's worse.
We have bendy buses in Birmingham UK (route 66). They seem no less popular than other buses. People enter via front and leave via back so passes must be shown to driver and (exact) fare paid. I shall ride them with pride if Boris does not like them...
When my in-laws first saw the honor based public transport system in Munich/Germany they commented that this would probably not work in their home city Taipei/Taiwan.
Yeah, MUNI(cipal railways) of SF, which uses a kind of honor system for buses and above ground LRVs, have a fare evasion rate of 15 to 30%, based on MTA estimates.
Local activists typically lobby against enforcement as they interpret it as targeting a vulnerable population. On the other hand, MUNI is running a deficit.
> could any man resist the temptation of evil if he knew his acts could not be witnessed? ... Paul F. ... knows that the answer, at least 89 percent of the time, is yes.
Coincides remarkably with what a former fraud investigator once told me, that 11% of the population is sociopaths.
I wonder how the payment rates would change if he simply mounted a non-functional wireless camera plugged into a socket pointing at the bagel location?
(ie, hinting to people that they are not invisible as in the story of the Ring of Gyges)
I wonder how the payment rates would change if he simply mounted a ... camera
An interesting question. I wouldn't be surprised if the camera made it worse. My guess is that people, when trusted, hold themselves to a higher standard. But with a camera present, they're allowed to turn off their own consciences. So people would be ingenious about palming a bagel so the camera wouldn't see, and think that if the camera's not seeing it, they're home free.
> We examined the effect of an image of a pair of eyes on contributions to an honesty box used to collect money for drinks in a university coffee room. People paid nearly three times as much for their drinks when eyes were displayed rather than a control image. This finding provides the first evidence from a naturalistic setting of the importance of cues of being watched, and hence reputational concerns, on human cooperative behaviour.
Upvoted because it's interesting, but I don't think it directly addresses my thesis. The cited study is looking at the effect of subliminally suggesting that someone could be watching. I'm wondering about a situation where the subject really is being watched, or is at least made to believe that he is, and in a way that such that his evil behavior can be easily masked.
Specifically, I theorize that if someone else asserts control over a person's moral behavior, then that subject will exercise less self-control, yielding to the authority as necessary.
In Japan many local businesses and delivery people, mums on bikes and so on have a "tiger mask" eyes sticker on their vehicle or side of their shop for just this reason. He's a well known crime fighting character.. And it's very distinctive. It also carries what I assume is his catch phrase - "I won't let crime pass me by"
This is even more amazing, because the people know they're not being watched. I wonder how ingrained the image of eyes is? Could you achieve the same effect with a picture of a CCTV camera?
that is a really interesting idea. With a fake camera people can see what they are supposed to avoid. With a picture of a camera, where they are unclear exactly where the camera is, I wonder how that changes things.
Payment rates would change but my guess is sales would be hurt. I think people will be turned off by the implied message that their company could not be trusted and would punish Bagel Guy by not giving their business.
>if he simply mounted a non-functional wireless camera
Cheaper still, a sign saying "this break room is under video surveillance".
He could try all sorts of things in different locations, like starting a rumour that management watched for non-payment to decide who should be laid off first, etc..
Execs and higher paid people are less likely to carry cash on them as lower paid people. I wonder if this make theft, not making it any more ethical, but more likely to occur in moments of weakness. And what about the Whimpy effect of 'gladly pay you Tuesday' for bagel today. Are there make up payments being made?
I've read this story before and wondered then if he would have made a cardboard cutout of himself smiling with outstretched hands and put it behind the bagels (so it looked like he was offering them) if his payment rate would have gone up.
What makes me sad in reading this article is that the man set out to respect people's good nature with his honor system, but (at least in the telling) became a bit of a nag, obsessed with measuring and haranguing cheats.
about the same number of calories, (224 calories in a donut, 207 in a bagel) but those calories come from sugar and fat in the donut (4 times the sugar and 12 times the amount of fat).
That's a rather small bagel (75g). The issue here is mass. Bagels are much denser than donuts. Calorie Count has 285 calories in a medium, plain toasted bagel (100g) and 239 calories in a 60g medium glaze yeast donut.
Wow, I read this article and immediately thought: this is the future of digital media economies.
It's obvious that in the long run, it will be impossible to force people to pay for digital media. The only alternative is coercive, expensive, leak-prone control of the internet by governments, and I just don't see that as feasible in the long-term.
So, asking people to please be honest is basically the only alternative.
Look at Louis CK's experiment, or the Humble Indie Bundle, or Radiohead's In Rainbows, all those years ago. What were they doing? They were leaving out a bunch of bagels, and a box with a slot in it, and saying "Hey, we're not going to watch you, but we'd really appreciate it if you paid for your bagel."
Some further thoughts:
1) With digital bagel selling, the bagels are infinite, and the potential office size is the entire world.
2) With digital bagel selling, a recommended price can be asked for the bagel, but customers are encouraged to pay as much as they feel willing to give.
3) Similarly, digital bagel sellers such as Louis CK have used guilt-tripping to attempt to raise payment rates. Saying "I worked hard on this, I'm not asking for that much, I would really appreciate it if you supported me" - making an appeal to people's sense of fairness and generosity - must increase payment rates (/decrease theft)
4) What other factors might influence payment rates in digital selling, and might it be possible to account for these factors - to adjust selling techniques depending on the "digital weather"? For instance, given enough data, could you correlate payment rates to internet activity - maybe someone who looks at lots of pictures of Lolcats is more likely to pay - or someone who has read lots of depressing news articles is less likely to pay - or maybe someone literally browsing in a place where the weather is shit is less likely to pay? Could you tweak it so that someone is most likely to see an ad/link for your digital bagels when the digital weather is optimal?
5) By always starting selling as digital bagels, sellers can prevent the worst excesses of the torrent cycle. If you try and lock digital bagels into the traditional payment model, they will almost certainly instantly appear in torrents, at which point, all potential buyers will be faced with a choice - buy at the set price from the standard outlet or sneak around to the backdoor torrent outlet. By setting up a digital bagel shop, you can let those who would not pay anyway do so, immediately, making it less likely for anyone to set up a backdoor torrent. Why torrent a digital bagel when it can be downloaded for free, in a pristine copy, from the official outlet? Preventing the runaway torrent cycle means that all customers, payers and non-payers, will be exposed to the optimum conditions for inducing payment - resulting in the highest potential returns.
6) How do we calculate a reasonable return for digital bagel selling? Beyond paying for hosting and bandwidth, there is no cost for selling/giving away 10,000 digital bagels vs 100,000 digital bagels. How much should creators of media be paid - how do we calculate how much they deserve to be paid?
Much of this I am sure is what the people at Humble Indie Bundle spend a lot of time thinking about. But it is clear to me that the SOPA-path is not a tenable future for the internet (my native New Zealand has unfortunately already gone down this path). Worldwide free or next-to-free circulation of cultural goods is a net good for society. More people reading more, watching more, thinking more, means potentially more people more educated and aware than ever before - and people creating more fantastic things than ever before.
But we are being dragged away from this path by those who reaped fat rewards from the old system, when commodity sold was linked to cost of production, and physical formats meant IP enforcement was still feasible. The stalwarts of the old system are not willing to consider the reformulations of basic economic strategy necessary to take advantage of the new situation.
Hopefully we end up with a free internet, where everyone sells their own digital bagels, and people are on the whole honest and generous! Fingers crossed.
I remember reading this in Freakonomics but with a bit more embellishment. I remember that when the payment rates started to sag, he would put a picture of eyes by the money box, and that often helped the rate rise again.
A bored office worker could do a bit of his own experimentation in this vein -- how many donuts do people buy when there's a fake rubber cockroach near the box? A picture of a severely obese person, or a very fit person, or a salad?
I noticed there is quite a bit of speeding in this article which is concerned with small crimes. Presumably that's OK because there isn't victim involved.
Whether speeding is criminal depends on where you are, and the speed you are travelling. One might make a similar argument that an 'honor box' is a 'suggested donation', and that one is simply choosing not to donate. You could probably even argue that it _must_ be considered a voluntary donation as evidenced by the failure to collect the required sales tax.
I think 'funkah' has a point. There are lots of things happening in this article, and it's fair to look at the situation from a different perspective than the primary. As a California business owner, I didn't notice the speeding, but did wonder about whether or not DC required him to have health and vending permits for each of his locations, and whether the legality of his business should affect our conclusions: is it more or less ethically acceptable to 'steal' a donut from an 'illegal' business?
But if you consider the honor box a suggested donation box, is that a business, still?
The sales tax is likely included in the dollar amount. Like when you are quoted 3.99/gallon of fuel. That price includes a number of taxes built in.
We (well, specifically, I) don't know if DC requires permits for re-selling food-stuff. We do not know if he is on the level, were they to require such. It probably depends on how much revenue is produced by each location. Just as sidewalk Lemonade stands don't require permits, in most locales. Anyhow, all that is speculative, unless you have facts.
Ethics. I think you are getting into relative ethics. If someone else goes against ethics, does it grant me a waiver to act unethically?
if you consider the honor box a suggested donation box, is that a business
A fine question, and an ongoing local issue near me: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123422026431565295.html
A local Thai temple has a mandatory voluntary donation scheme that they use to skirt a lot of laws. I love their food, but am against their sham.
The sales tax is likely included in the dollar amount.
Could be, but I'd bet that he's technically non-compliant. The rules are mighty complex. Our next-door neighbor restaurant was recently fined heavily for considering their sandwich purchases "take out" while providing unofficial side-walk seating.
We (well, specifically, I) don't know if DC requires permits for re-selling food-stuff.
It probably depends on how much revenue is produced by each location.
I deal with many such laws in California, and have not found many such exclusions. Rather, like speeding, the behaviour is technically illegal but regulated with only selective enforcement. I don't like selective enforcement.
Just as sidewalk Lemonade stands don't require permits, in most locales.
Anyhow, all that is speculative, unless you have facts.
True. I can really only speak only to my experience running a food business in California, where my opinion is that it is impossible to run a business without breaking numerous laws. Heck, I just learned last month that all of my employees are working illegally: http://sanfrancisco.grubstreet.com/2011/06/so_has_anyone_in_...
If someone else goes against ethics, does it grant me a waiver to act unethically?
This is indeed the real question. It certainly doesn't grant an unconditional waiver, but I think there can be mitigating factors. Would it matter that the Bagel Guy has the permission of the business (he does)? What if he was representing it as a charity: http://bulkvending.blogspot.com/2008/04/making-money-from-ch...
I think the question is ethics. While the article was entertaining, it didn't delve deeply enough into the situation to be informative on ethics. I post to HN hoping that discussion might be able to happen here...
I wonder if this could be a way for companies to figure out (surreptitiously) how managers are doing: provide such a bagel service to each department, and see where the theft rate is the highest. Of course, it has to be done completely incognito, otherwise the managers would make sure that the cash box is stuff full of cash....