Sometimes people need to think before they speak, and by “think” we mean they need to do some basic math.

In today’s story, one customer is complaining that a company’s rates are too expensive.

They seem to think another company is giving them a better deal.

Are they right?

Let’s see how the story unfolds.

Well that’s too much money.

My dad is a manager for a trucking company.

He’s in charge of hiring drivers, finding jobs, and deciding what drivers to put on what jobs.

A few weeks ago, someone came to my dad and asked how much he would charge to do a few deliveries over the next few months.

My dad let him know that it would be $115/hour.

“well that’s too much money!”

Dad decides to match the other company’s rate.

Dad explains to him that all of his drivers are already on a job that’s paying $115, so my dad can’t just put a driver on a job worth less money, when they could be making that much.

This guy let’s my dad know that another company said they will charge a flat rate instead of a per hour rate.

And they are charging $850 to take one load to this site and back.

My dad thinks for a few minutes and tells him, “I’ll match that price for a month, and see if it’s worth it to keep doing that. By the end of the month I’ll let you know if we can keep the $850/load.”

All it took was simple math to see if it was a good deal or not.

Now, my dad is pretty good at math.

All he did to decide if the $850 would be worth it, was to calculate the time it would take to run a load and if it was less than $115 it was no go.

Thing is.. the drive to the site and back was only an hour and a half.

At my dad’s original offer, it would have been around $175/load unless there was bad traffic.

But it would still take around 7 hours to be worth $850.

The customer clearly didn’t do any math!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This is true.

Here’s the perspective of someone who works at a deli.

Another person shares a quote by Aristotle Onassis.

This person’s former boss had to deal with customers like this all the time.

Sometimes the original price is the best price.

You just have to be smart enough to realize it.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.