The Hanover Collaboration

Ever since the Airtran Cup thing, I’ve gotten a lot more familiar with the Wendies Menu. The menu from one on Mass ave at Berkley contains:

#Junior Cheeseburger $.99 #Junior Cheeseburger Deluxe $.99 #Junior Bacon Cheeseburger $.99

If you’re unfamiliar with Wendy’s fare {JCD}—{JC} = {pickles, onions, mustard} and {JBC}—{JC} = {bacon}.

You can’t ask for a “Junior Bacon Cheeseburger Deluxe” since that isn’t on the menu—get kicked out of the store. If you ask for a “Junior Cheeseburger Deluxe with bacon” if you’re lucky, you’ll get a sandwich but it’ll costs you $1.39. Chances are good that you don’t get anywhere with that order either.

The correct thing to order is a “Junior Bacon Cheeseburger with pickles, onions and mustard” since adding those items is explicitly allowed at no charge¹. But it is perilous to order with that particular wording because you will find yourself with a cheeseburger lacking tomato and lettuce and mayo. What tends to work for me is, “Junior Bacon Cheeseburger to which I would like added [pause] pickles, onions and mustard.”

The key is to stress the word add. They are going to need to press a special button to make your order work… a button that says “ADD” on it. Then you watch their eyes and gauge the level of fear—you need to be prepared to quickly call it off to avoid destroying the whole restaurant.

Another insider Wendy’s trick is that you can get ground up M&M’s in your frosty for $.30 extra (and occasionally for free if the cashier is new or flustered from your JBCD).

¹ While the posters say that they even encourage this sort of customization, in practice it would seem otherwise.

I have never been too keen on the idea of winter camping but I got some very nice mittens for Christmas and I think I’m going to give it a go. I was wondering if any of you guys have any good advice in the technique or gear departments.

Not you, somebody else: Hey advice column guy, I’ve got a problem.
—Negative Adjective

Advice Column Guy: Dear Negative Adjective,
Imagine you’re driving somewhere and you make a wrong turn, drive for a little while and then realize it. What do you do?

Let n be the fraction of the time that the optimal action is to turn around and drive straight back to where you made the wrong turn. I think people tend to choose that action substantially less than n of the time.

Let me try to be more clear. You were driving from A to B via C at which point you drove from C to C’ which is not on the optimal route from A to B. Suppose the optimal route from C’ to B goes through C. People prefer not to retrace C’ to C or even to go through C again at all. My question is why?

Is it that they don’t want to admit a mistake? That could be, but I don’t think that is quite it. I think it is that people feel “invested” in C to C’ or that they are “committed” to the new plan. Backtracking would be to sacrifice that investment—to show a lack of commitment. Or maybe people simply forget that C to C’ is sunk and shouldn’t be considered in the C’ to B problem.

Due to this affect, it seems that plans generate a strange momentum. You know what it is like. You accumulate commitments to all kinds of people and activities. “I’d love to but I have to…” you hear people say. Maybe it has something to do with the high seating of “responsibility” in the pantheon of virtue. When you say that you will do something, you have to do it. Sounds good right? Maybe not. What if future information tells you that not doing it is the better course of action? Do you still do it? What if you never actually said it but rather just told yourself that you would do it? [1]

I often find myself advising people to “take a step back”. What does that mean anyway? I mean that it is easy to lose track of primary goals in pursuit of subgoals. But the subgoals are not what matter; you are totally free to punt on them.

I define plan as a weakly-ordered set of subgoals that terminate with a primary goal. If the plan is going shitty, for instance failing subgoals, you don’t have to “stick to it” you can just make up a new plan.
—akward positive adverb,
Advice Column Guy

¹ philosophical side quest What if you promised someone something on their deathbed. Noone else knows that you made this promise. Under what circumstances would you break that promise? I seem to be abnormal in that I would have no trouble breaking that promise. That’s a heads up to you guys—If you want something tedious done with your ashes or Beany-Baby collection or something, you should ask someone else.