This comes dangerously close to "shit-testing", making a difficult and unreasonable demand not because you care, but because you want to test the other's loyalty.
I think such strategies may be poisonous in the longer term. Now you've got to drink that damn orange juice, your business gets a reputation for obsession with rituals involving orange juice, and maybe even people start believing it - or start enjoying being difficult a little too much.
It's not supposed to test the other's loyalty, but if the other party is grounded to reality. It's potentially possible, but hard, time consuming, and thus expensive.
In the same spirit (but for another reason), the famous "Van Halen brown M&Ms clause" [1], which served as a proxy for how likely the venue also read & complied with the safety precautions for the concert.
I mean it’s not that hard to rent a couple juicing machines and make 700 cups of oj. Maybe a bit expensive because you have to source them in a large radius but not crazy expensive. If it has to be done manually ok then it’s just expensive because of labor costs but still 20 people could probably knock it out with a press. I’d probably charge at least 5-6$ a head for that ideally closer to $10 just because it’s not simple to arrange but doable
A cup of orange juice is typically pretty small and resturant juicers work pretty fast. A big banquet hall that does mimosas probably already has the equipment to accommodate this request. (Or close enough, I'd juice a bit the night before to get a sense of the time and have some in case we run out)
And realistically, I saw no requirement of 100% fresh squeezed orange juice. So at most we're doing 51% fresh squeezed. I'm not sure it specified a size either. So we can certainly shave half an ounce or more off of whatever is customary.
You could always send the busboy to the grocery store to pick up a few gallons if you run short.
When you do big parties like that you don't just randomly distribute servings. I'd have the overfull, 100% real, ten minute old OJ for the guy with the really particular request and could end up serving sunny delight to the cheap seats. To serve 700 people a drink takes a considerable amount of time in and of itself so you have more breathing room than you expect.
This is really common. When you do a wedding the bride and grooms table gets the best looking portions you have, the table next to the bathroom isn't so lucky.
> OJ must be fresh and squeezed no more than 2 hour prior
He also has no clue that it's 2 hours old or 4 hour old.
What he really wants to do is tell his guests "this was fresh squeezed, two hours old" and he will get what he paid for, just like his Maine lobster (thats probably Russian) or softshell crabs from Alaska (China), or Key lime pie (Chinese lime juice). That's how the resturant industry works, this test is useless there.
Yeah you just failed, and if it was my country you would be reported to the Public Complaint Board and fined for probably breaking contract and false advertisement.
In America this is the way. Large corporations strive to be minimally compliant in all things. A small vendor would probably try to delight tough and do exactly what you wanted
Yeah I think the test was to show that the quote was not bs and the vendor thought about how they work might get performed as opposed to giving a bs number.
If he vendor has to hand squeeze it might be 10$ if they have a machine its 5$ but either one is a valid quote. If someone says no problem we can do it no solution steps are provided then your vendor didn’t examine the problem sufficiently. Keep in mind this was 1980s when auto juicers weren’t common. In modern times a large venue might just be able to do it without any additional expense and absorb some of the cost because markup is high enough
I think the point is less about how to specifically make 700 glasses of orange juice in the 2 hours between 5 and 7am and more about forcing a supplier to come up with a meaningful quote at non-zero cost, presumably to say "actually never mind, it was a test" or just ignore the effort. Unless this is service they already provide: even if they only have to ring round juicer machine hire in the area and figure out the logistics of getting it to the site on time it's not free to the venue. It's a way to offload the cost of your internal requirements onto each supplier, and if fact is more punitive on better suppliers who make the effort to allocate resources into coming up with a quote for a service you don't even want.
It's almost the exact opposite of that, it's making an unreasonable demand specifically to suss out if the other person is just telling you what they think you want to hear or is engaging in the task in good faith.
If that were true, then "I'm sorry, I don't think we can accommodate that particular request. Can we negotiate on the exact details? We can provide not-from-concentrate store-bought orange juice ..." should pass the test. But this author unequivocally states that saying they can't do it is a hard fail. I'd be happy to fail this test and dodge the bullet of an unreasonable client.
I've re-read the article and couldn't find anything that would suggest the requirement is fake, as in, the juice is actually not needed.
> One important condition is that the company has the hallowed tradition of starting the day’s event at 7 in the morning, with a toast to success, using Orange Juice.
So it's a hypothetical situation, in which the company really needs the juice. In reality, you probably need something else:
> It helps if people come up with a question or a set of questions that serve the equivalent of the Orange Juice Test question.
> If you are a technical manager, it can be as simple as ‘ How do you program feature X or Y ?’
Isolate a hard part of what you need, and ask about the cost of it - that's how I understood the article.
It is shit-testing, only with a different taste. Shit-tasting.
You see this in personal ads all the time. Women get so many low-effort messages they introduce a canary of sorts ("start your response with the word purple") just to filter out the ones who didn't pay any attention to their profile. Reasonable enough, right?
Where it becomes shit-testing is when their profile is a novel-length manifesto. It demands a lot of commitment upfront for no guarantee of returns. But if you're willing to put up with such demands, enjoy pursuing a relationship with someone who makes a game of testing the boundaries of others. It'll be so much fun for you.
> The only response worth serious consideration is ‘we can do this — and this is how much it will cost’.
I'd be livid if I went to the trouble of sourcing juicers, oranges and staff and providing a quote just to be told it was just a test to see if I read the contract.
Clearly, wasting others' time means nothing to the author. Does he also prank call businesses and harass the representatives to test their professionalism?
As with dating, negotiation in bad faith is not a sign of a healthy relationship to come.
And Van Halen's No Brown M&M's clause[0] in the contract for verifying.
"To ensure the promoter had read every single word in the contract, the band created the "no brown M&M's" clause. It was a canary in a coalmine to indicate that the promoter may have not paid attention to other more important parts of the rider, and that there could be other bigger problems at hand."
There seems to be an unstated assumption in the article that every potential customer is worth doing whatever it takes to close the deal. I say no -- knowing when to disengage with PITA customers is one of the most valuable business skills to have.
It depends if you are charging for premium service or not.
If you want a cheap banquet, the organizer will probably tell you to put all your oranges where the sun doesn't shine. As a budget service provider, his job is to find you the best deal, with streamlined service, a limited number of suppliers and high volume deals, etc...
Now if you are going to a luxury service provider, you can essentially ask anything, he will deliver orange juice on the moon if you want to. His job is no longer to find you a good deal, his job is to do whatever it takes to do what you want if you have the money. You will obviously pay a lot more, even for regular service, but that orange juice breakfast should be easy.
It reminds me of documentaries about the most luxurious hotels. Like preparing a bridge table in the room of a repeat customer, or one who forgot his passport and they immediately dispatched a chauffeur to bring it to him at the airport. All of that without even being asked. That's what you get when you pay several thousands a night. Part of the price is for being ready to handle any situation.
You know how you can tell they are about to lie, they use the scripted "Wow. Yea. Great question, analog31. So, as a company, Foobuzz puts their customers first, so..."
People think that quoting the actual cost will drive away prospective customers, but genuine customers appreciate honest and transparent responses.
This is, unfortunately, not true. Must customers will almost always choose the cheaper alternative, even knowing it will likely be more expensive in the long run.
If you are selling devtools, the best way I've found to succeed with the OJ test is to have a technical person on the first call. Not the second, not gated by a sales rep, but on the first call.
Sure, it's expensive, but if a dev is hopping on a call, they darn well want to get technical answers. You can really really antagonize someone by not helping them out.
Of course, better yet is to allow them to set up a free account or otherwise have access to the tool to determine if it will meet their needs without talking to anyone at all.
The difference being pulp is ripe fruit in a fruit juice you're drinking and seeds/leaves/dirt are not edible for us in the first place. I seriously don't get it—if you don't like fruit why drink fruit juice. Plenty of "fruit flavored" ones (I'm partial to Aranciata Rossa Pellegrino)
>The only response worth serious consideration is ‘we can do this — and this is how much it will cost’. Others are either fluffing to get the business or are not serious about their offer.
On the other hand, from the service provider's point of view, the only correct answer is "No" or perhaps a price so high that it might justify dealing with a nightmare client.
44 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 234 ms ] threadI think such strategies may be poisonous in the longer term. Now you've got to drink that damn orange juice, your business gets a reputation for obsession with rituals involving orange juice, and maybe even people start believing it - or start enjoying being difficult a little too much.
In the same spirit (but for another reason), the famous "Van Halen brown M&Ms clause" [1], which served as a proxy for how likely the venue also read & complied with the safety precautions for the concert.
[1] https://businessofsoftware.org/2013/08/the-truth-about-van-h...
When you do big parties like that you don't just randomly distribute servings. I'd have the overfull, 100% real, ten minute old OJ for the guy with the really particular request and could end up serving sunny delight to the cheap seats. To serve 700 people a drink takes a considerable amount of time in and of itself so you have more breathing room than you expect.
This is really common. When you do a wedding the bride and grooms table gets the best looking portions you have, the table next to the bathroom isn't so lucky.
The requirements were clear and specific and you cheated to achieve the goal you assumed, not the goal that was stated.
He also has no clue that it's 2 hours old or 4 hour old.
What he really wants to do is tell his guests "this was fresh squeezed, two hours old" and he will get what he paid for, just like his Maine lobster (thats probably Russian) or softshell crabs from Alaska (China), or Key lime pie (Chinese lime juice). That's how the resturant industry works, this test is useless there.
willcipriano: "This wouldn't work on me, because I'd just do fraud"
If he vendor has to hand squeeze it might be 10$ if they have a machine its 5$ but either one is a valid quote. If someone says no problem we can do it no solution steps are provided then your vendor didn’t examine the problem sufficiently. Keep in mind this was 1980s when auto juicers weren’t common. In modern times a large venue might just be able to do it without any additional expense and absorb some of the cost because markup is high enough
In which case it's the wrong request. The article specifically says it should be a very onerous request.
> One important condition is that the company has the hallowed tradition of starting the day’s event at 7 in the morning, with a toast to success, using Orange Juice.
So it's a hypothetical situation, in which the company really needs the juice. In reality, you probably need something else:
> It helps if people come up with a question or a set of questions that serve the equivalent of the Orange Juice Test question.
> If you are a technical manager, it can be as simple as ‘ How do you program feature X or Y ?’
Isolate a hard part of what you need, and ask about the cost of it - that's how I understood the article.
You see this in personal ads all the time. Women get so many low-effort messages they introduce a canary of sorts ("start your response with the word purple") just to filter out the ones who didn't pay any attention to their profile. Reasonable enough, right?
Where it becomes shit-testing is when their profile is a novel-length manifesto. It demands a lot of commitment upfront for no guarantee of returns. But if you're willing to put up with such demands, enjoy pursuing a relationship with someone who makes a game of testing the boundaries of others. It'll be so much fun for you.
> The only response worth serious consideration is ‘we can do this — and this is how much it will cost’.
I'd be livid if I went to the trouble of sourcing juicers, oranges and staff and providing a quote just to be told it was just a test to see if I read the contract.
Clearly, wasting others' time means nothing to the author. Does he also prank call businesses and harass the representatives to test their professionalism?
As with dating, negotiation in bad faith is not a sign of a healthy relationship to come.
"To ensure the promoter had read every single word in the contract, the band created the "no brown M&M's" clause. It was a canary in a coalmine to indicate that the promoter may have not paid attention to other more important parts of the rider, and that there could be other bigger problems at hand."
[0] https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/no-brown-mms...
If you want a cheap banquet, the organizer will probably tell you to put all your oranges where the sun doesn't shine. As a budget service provider, his job is to find you the best deal, with streamlined service, a limited number of suppliers and high volume deals, etc...
Now if you are going to a luxury service provider, you can essentially ask anything, he will deliver orange juice on the moon if you want to. His job is no longer to find you a good deal, his job is to do whatever it takes to do what you want if you have the money. You will obviously pay a lot more, even for regular service, but that orange juice breakfast should be easy.
It reminds me of documentaries about the most luxurious hotels. Like preparing a bridge table in the room of a repeat customer, or one who forgot his passport and they immediately dispatched a chauffeur to bring it to him at the airport. All of that without even being asked. That's what you get when you pay several thousands a night. Part of the price is for being ready to handle any situation.
They all lied to me. I don't ask salesmen questions any more.
Pricing, functionality, support? Ask someone else.
People think that quoting the actual cost will drive away prospective customers, but genuine customers appreciate honest and transparent responses.
This is, unfortunately, not true. Must customers will almost always choose the cheaper alternative, even knowing it will likely be more expensive in the long run.
Sure, it's expensive, but if a dev is hopping on a call, they darn well want to get technical answers. You can really really antagonize someone by not helping them out.
Of course, better yet is to allow them to set up a free account or otherwise have access to the tool to determine if it will meet their needs without talking to anyone at all.
True, but a juice can contain pulp, and that's what they're asking. You want the juice with or without pulp.
>I seriously don't get it—if you don't like fruit why drink fruit juice
So you include the seeds, rind, and pith in your juices, right? Or are you just a pretend fruit liker as well?
On the other hand, from the service provider's point of view, the only correct answer is "No" or perhaps a price so high that it might justify dealing with a nightmare client.