Icees, Softdrinks, and Redundant Systems

A year or so ago, I took my kids to see a movie. They both wanted an Icee. Unfortunately, all three Icee machines weren't working. My youngest child cried.

"Curious coincidence", I thought. "How could all three machines go down simultaneously?"

A few months ago we went back to the same theater. This time, not only were the Icee machines down, but none of the soft drink machines were working either.

"Very curious," I thought. So I asked to speak to the manager.

Turns out, all of the soft drink machines get their CO2 from the same machine, which is in a backroom of the theater. And there was a leak in the one pipe leading from that room to the refreshment area. Still not sure how that would affect the Icee machines. Do those require CO2 also?

Root cause: No redundancy of CO2. Single point of failure.

So I started watching the customers standing in line. Most of them ending up not buying anything when they found out there was no soda available. Although there were refrigerators with bottled and canned drinks, no one was buying them. Apparently people don't buy a lot of vitamin water when they go out to the movies.

For amusement, I made an educated guess as to how much sales they lost and convinced myself they were losing money hand over fist.

Thinking back to redundancy, I realized that if they were to dump all the vitamin water down the sink and stock the refrigerators with bottles of soda from Costco, they could start making money again.

When I suggested that idea to one of the employees, he told me, "that wouldn't work. People wouldn't buy it."

To which I responded, "I'd buy it."

Anyway, it became quite clear that neither the manager nor the employees were interested in solving their problem, and it was just about time for my movie to start anyway. So I moved on.

But I wouldn't be surprised if the accountant had a heart attack when he looked at that store's cash flow for the month.