The following appeared in a memorandum from the owner of the Juniper Cafe, a small, local coffee shop in the downtown area of a small American city:
"We must reduce overhead here at the cafe. Instead of opening at 6 a.m. weekdays, we will now open at 8 a.m. On weekends, we will only be open from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. The decrease in hours of operations will help save money because we won't be paying for utilities, employee wages, or other operating costs during the hours we are closed. This is the best strategy for us to save money and remain in business without having to eliminate jobs."
The owner of Juniper Café believes that changing the hours of operation will ultimately save the café more money. However, the owner fails to understand that there may be other costs draining his or her funds, fails to present a proper breakdown of his or her cost allocation, and fails to empathize with the needs of his or her employees.
First, the owner states in the memorandum that by decreasing the hours of operations, the café will save money by not paying for those extra utility bills, paying employee wages, and other operating costs. This argument doesn’t delve into other possibilities of costs. For example, perhaps the cost of coffee beans that are imported from other countries are too high. The owner could instead buy more locally sourced beans. Other ingredients or items, such as milk, sugar syrups, and bakery treats may boost costs—especially if customers are not buying enough of these other products. By considering these are aspects of running a café, the owner could cut costs in other, more effective ways that may better satisfy customers as well.
In addition to looking for other ways to cut costs, the owner doesn’t provide support as to why he or she picked cutting operation hours to save on utility bills and employee wages. If the owner made a conscious decision about cost reductions, he or she should have explained how high the utility bill has gotten over a span of few months and shown how the new hours would reduce that cost. Or if he or she is not willing to let go of employees, then explain how the new hours will help Juniper save money while sustaining the baristas’ jobs.
In relation to the employees at Juniper Café, it’s possible that reduced hours may be more of a hindrance to the staff than helpful. Many part-time, service jobs take on employees who need a flexible work schedule that provides enough hours for them to make ends meet. This is particularly the case for students or people taking on second jobs. By reducing hours, the owner is not being empathetic to his or her staff and creating an inadequate work environment for these people. This puts the café at risk of losing employees, who are in need of maintaining a certain number of hours each week.
Though the owner of Juniper Café has an idea of how to save money, he or she did not consider how changing the hours of operations will affect the store, the patrons, and the employees. With more support of his or her choice on where to cut spending or perhaps more consideration of the different stakeholders of the café, the owner could have presented a more thoughtful memo to his or her staff.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 462 350
No. of Characters: 2108 1500
No. of Different Words: 215 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.636 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.563 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.395 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 120 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 94 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 64 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 42 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.667 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.534 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.556 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.344 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.563 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.179 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, however, if, look, may, second, so, then, well, while, as to, for example, in addition, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 11.0 19.6327345309 56% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 21.0 11.1786427146 188% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 36.0 28.8173652695 125% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2208.0 2260.96107784 98% => OK
No of words: 459.0 441.139720559 104% => OK
Chars per words: 4.81045751634 5.12650576532 94% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.62863751936 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.60808064835 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 223.0 204.123752495 109% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.485838779956 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 660.6 705.55239521 94% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.4 1.59920159681 88% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.3755341852 57.8364921388 87% => OK
Chars per sentence: 122.666666667 119.503703932 103% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.5 23.324526521 109% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.66666666667 5.70786347227 99% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.0897628514894 0.218282227539 41% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0358389879088 0.0743258471296 48% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0310813769999 0.0701772020484 44% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0527691149073 0.128457276422 41% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0154592721627 0.0628817314937 25% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.0 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 63.02 48.3550499002 130% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.91 12.5979740519 87% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.83 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 86.0 98.500998004 87% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.