Please Rate- The CoffeeCart beverage and food service located

The following appeared in a memorandum to the work-group supervisors of the GBS Company:
“The CoffeeCart beverage and food service located in the lobby of our main office building is not earning enough in
sales to cover its costs, and so the cart may discontinue operating at GBS. Given the low staff morale, as evidenced
by the increase in the number of employees leaving the company, the loss of this service could present a problem,
especially since the staff morale questionnaire showed widespread dissatisfaction with the snack machines.
Therefore, supervisors should remind the employees in their group to patronize the cart—after all, it was leased for
their convenience so that they would not have to walk over to the cafeteria on breaks.”

Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.

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The argument in the memorandum to the supervisors claims that the supervisors should remind the employees to patronize the cart. Though the argument may well have merit, the author presents a poorly reasoned argument which is based on several questionable assumptions and unsubstantiated premises.

First the argument readily assumes that the increase in the attrition rate of the employees is due to dissatisfaction with the food services in place. But such an assumption is a stretch, to illustrate, there could be other factors for why employees are leaving the company, such as dissatisfaction with work, inadequate compensation or benefits, lack of recognition, etc. All of these reasons cannot be solved by retaining a food and beverages service in the office's lobby. Had there been evidence that directly linked dissatisfaction with the available food and beverages options to the employees' attrition rate, then the argument would have been strengthened.

Second, there is a major flaw in the argument as it contradicts itself. On one hand the argument claims that the employees do not use the CoffeeCart services and its sales are low, and on the other hand it claims that retaining their services is valuable for the employees' morale. If the employees are not even using the services and would rather walk over to the cafeteria as suggested in the argument, it is not very apparent how the two are linked with each. The argument would have been a lot more convincing if the author had resolved this paradox like situation in the argument.


Finally, there are many questions that the argument leaves unanswered. For example, there is no evidence to suggest that CoffeeCart would cease its services because of low sales. If GBS company compensates CoffeeCart such that sales are not its only source of income, then maybe it is still profitable for it to continue. Also, it is not very clear in the passage what the dissatisfaction with the snack machine has anything to do with the CoffeeCart services, since the employees prefer cafeteria over CoffeeCart, and there is no evidence to show that they are dissatisfied with the cafeteria services.

In summary, the argument is flawed for the aforementioned reasons and is, therefore, unconvincing. If the author had included the items discussed above, the argument would have been more thorough and sound.