Students arrive at the school office at an average of one student every 15 minutes, and their requests take on average 10 minutes to be processed. the service counter is staffed by only one clerk, linda jones, who works eight hours per day and gets paid $75 per day.
the managers of the school office estimate that the time students spend waiting in line costs them $10 per hour. to reduce the time a student spends waiting, they know that they need to improve the school office processing time. they are currently considering the following two options:
i) install a computer system, with which linda expects to be able to complete student requests 40 percent faster (i. e. if a request took 10 minutes it now would take 6 minutes)
ii) hire another temporary clerk, who will work at the same rate as judy.
the computer costs $60 to operate per day (which also accounts for the initial purchase cost of the computer), while the temporary clerk gets paid $50 per day.
rationally determine which option is the best one to take.
(hint: it might be to start by determining what would be the expected total number of hours students would spend waiting at the school office per day, in the current situation and for each of the options being considered in order to determine the cost of each situation.)