Mismanagement

And, surprisingly, not my own.

BIG NOTE: So apparently this entry is based entirely on a false premise. TANSTAAFL, however, is closed right now; see the entry immediately following this one for the correct version.

(Sorry for making so many posts in a day, but this needs to be said.)

I go to TANSTAAFL tonight, it's closed. Grumble grumble, I'm hungry, I want a soda to go with my dinner, I don't have time for this shit. Take the elevator up to Shorey, bang on Kelvin's door. No answer. Go back to the Shorey lounge where I saw... what's his name... not Stefan, the other one. Regardless. Ask him, where the hell's Kelvin? TANSTAAFL's closed! He tells me, it's closed permanently; PTC closed it down because it wasn't making enough money.

I'd ask "Why weren't we told about this?", but I suppose it's because none of our PTC representatives came to house meeting last week.

But really. What the fuck? Now - I forget who told me this last year, maybe it was Sean, maybe it wasn't - but I remember hearing that TANSTAAFL doesn't actually make a profit on most of what it sells - the only thing it really makes money on is the cheese sticks.

Now, maybe it's just me, but it seems to me that if you're only making money on one of the things you sell, you better be damn sure you're selling it. When Kelvin has his employees microwaving the cheese sticks, this is a problem for TANSTAAFL. C'mon. Did he really think people couldn't tell the difference? The microwave often resulted in the styrofoam *plate* becoming stuck to the cheese sticks, rendering parts of them inedible! Did he even bother to *look* at his sales figures? Anyone paying any attention can see that last year, when peoplewent down to TANSTAAFL, they often got cheese sticks, and this year, they don't. And all he needed to do to fix the problem was buy some goddamn tongs! *I* could have managed TANSTAAFL better than this!

Now, maybe it's not because of the cheese sticks that TANSTAAFL has gone under, but until I hear anything to the contrary I'm going to guess that it is. They need to get rid of Kelvin, put a new manager in place, and get it running again with some good cheese sticks! Because I want my cheese sticks, yes, but more than that, I want my cheap soda!

-Harry

A reversion to normality?

So apparently this Zoe person isn't moving in after all. She "declined", says Kate.

I have to wonder if in previous years, people did get notices that they were getting a roommate, only later to have all these roommates decline. But no, I think I would have heard about such.

So presumably Zoe was willing to accept a double, and thus was assigned to Kate's room, but she didn't want that one in particular, and thus declined once she knew specifically what she was getting?

So, no new Tuftsians for now. But still strange.

-Harry

Says the lottery: Aviva gets Nadja's room

Unrelatedly: Today in Soc... well, today the TA was teaching, actually, but anyway, the TA is talking about reverse causation, and asks for examples where this could happen. One guy offers up the example of wolves and rabbits. The TA doesn't know what he's talking about. The guy says about how they each affect the other's population. "They eat each other," he says.

ADDENDUM: This Zoe girl? She's a second-year. Now that is really just against the normal order of things... stranger and stranger... well, it's possible that two out of two is a coincidence, but if someone fills Aviva's spot? Then I think we can say for sure that something is up. Except, what could the cause possibly be except people being willing to accept doubles? I mean, that's certainly something strange, it's just not... you know... coordinated. It doesn't indicate anything, and there's no way to say why it's happened. I really want to attribute this to some sort of Housing conspiracy, but there's no way that actually makes sense.

-Harry

A comparison

So today I was saying about how strange it was that all these vacancies in doubles doubles were being quickly filled, and Jim didn't think it was so different from last year. The only time anyone moved into a double last year, I said, was Felipe, and that doesn't count - the reason doubles generally don't get filled is because people moving in aren't willing to accept a double, whereas Felipe, not having a room beforehand, had to accept something. (Also, I doubt he got to choose exactly which house to move into.) Jim still said Felipe ought to count, but he forgot just how many singles were made last year. As it happens, I have kept a record (compiled mostly after the fact, unfortunately, so my chronology may be slightly wrong, but only when events occurred close to each other) of all the room switches last year, and I can therefore determine how many vacancies in doubles were created and filled last year.

8 singles were created last year:
1. Frank's room when Brian moved out
2. Goetz's room when Peng moved out, Anthony took his room, and Milsark took his room
3. Marissa's room when Amy moved out and Shuo took her place with Katy
4. Ginny's room when Boz moved out, Goetz took her room and Meg and Sam took her room
5. Christine's/Lisa's room when Meg and Sam took Goetz's room and Lisa swapped places with Christine
6. ?/Brittany's room when Sharon and Lea moved out and Brittany took their place
7. Felipe's room when Frank moved out
8. Ben's room when Jack was kicked out

Of these vacancies, a total of 1 was filled - Frank's room when Felipe moved in - if you even count that.

This year, on the other hand, 3 have been created, 2 of which have been filled (or are definitely going to be filled in the next few days) - and the third (Nadja moving out) only just happened so we can't really say yet that it isn't getting filled.

Jim was also wondering why I seem so upset about this - well, largely, it's on behalf of the first-years; when your roommate leaves, you're supposed to have the room to yourself, not just end up with some new roommate assigned to you!

Of course, this raises the question of whether perhaps it was *last* year that was atypical; however, I don't think this is the case because last year the second-years were always saying that vacancies in doubles never got filled because people weren't willing to accept doubles, i.e. this was true the year before as well (and probably going back some time).

-Sniffnoy