The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants."Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. This change, however, has had little im

The author’s argument that customers have not been affected by the change from butter to margarine relies heavily on flawed assumptions that can be otherwise explained. In the argument, the author assumes that because customers have not complained about the change that they have not been affected by the change. Additionally, the author assumes that servers would report all complaints made by the customers in regard to the change. Lastly, it is assumed that the population that has experienced the recent change is representative of the entire customer population. The claims made in this argument are unsubstantiated and do not make a cogent case that customers are happy with the change.

First, the author reports that only about two percent of customers have complained about the change from butter to margarine and are therefore unaffected by the change. This assumption is unsubstantiated because is likely that a large population of customers that were affected by the change did not complain about it to the staff. The argument that customers have not been complaining could be substantiated if a survey were offered to the customers.

Second, the author says that many servers do not report complaints from customers. The statement that servers are not reporting complaints cannot be used to conclude that the servers are not receiving complaints. It may be alternately explained that the servers are not reporting all of the complaints received. Likewise, managers may not be reporting all complaints to corporate. Unreported complaints would cause the statistics presented in this argument to be skewed.

Finally, it is stated that the change from butter to margarine has only recently been introduced to a portion of their restaurants. The customer population that has dined at the establishment since the change may not be representative of the entire population. The statistics may change in the future as more customers become aware of the change. Additionally, it may be that that customers in that region of the country prefer margarine to butter but that other customer populations would be less accepting of the change.

While this argument may have some merit, with out ruling out other possible explanations it cannot be concluded that customers are happy with the change from butter to margarine. The argument could be strengthened if the author provided information regarding the procedures in place for reporting complaints. Additionally, the number of servers who claim to report complaints received would add strength to this argument. As it stands, however the argument is flawed for the reasons indicated.