After a long day of running errands, I decided to take a break and have a beer in your bar. My phone battery was running a bit low, so I plugged it into the outlet I saw on the wall. Then you, Ms. Assistant Manager, came by a minute later and pulled it out, telling me that I wasn’t allowed to charge my phone. Really? I was a guest in your restaurant. What happened to service? Then you proceed to tell me that your establishment does not give away electricity for free. “If we did that for everyone we would be out of business,” you explained. Of course, I couldn’t help but note the three lonely customers in your place. Perhaps giving away free electricity is just what your place needs before it goes out of business. Otherwise, people might just keep going to Starbucks, where they let paying customers recharge devices, which is exactly what I did.
Illustration by Ron Pitts
Tags: Bar, electricity, Maui, phone, Starbucks
2 Comments
November 29, 2012
So you’re whining about not being able to steal electricity from a business that doesn’t offer free electricity?
December 3, 2012
I’m sure the 12W-h will break the bank on that power bill. Keeping that phone plugged in for one hour costs a grand total of $0.00048, or a whopping 0.05 Cents! Wow! What an incredibly horrible business move! Me Assistant Manager may as well shut down the AC and all the lights and pack in the business all together if that kind of power draw will break the business. In fact, you could have 1000 People with smartphones all charging at the same time for an hour and it would only cost not even a whole $0.50. That’s with overestimating Maui’s exorbitant power rates at $0.40/kW-h.
I think Ms. Assistant Manager needs to go back to school… not business school, but basic arithmetic. she lost Dollars because she was pissed about thousandTHS of a CENT! Wow! She lost more in tip money than the cost of helping 1000 people for an hour, just to put it into perspective.