A
pleasant street in Palo Alto. Plush lawns. A man asked me to repair
the wooden fence that separated his property from his neighbor. A small
job. He said he'd pay me in full: "My neighbor should pay for half of
it, since we share the fence, but Bella's such a cheapskate, I don't
even want to deal with her."When I show up, there's a problem: the man isn't home; his house is locked, and there's no outdoor power supply. I need to use my electric saw. Next door, Bella has an outlet on her porch.
I ring the doorbell. She's an old woman living alone in a nice house.
"I'm repairing the fence," I say. "Could I borrow a cup of electricity?"
"Whose paying for it?" Bella asks.
I'm surprised. Never been asked before. But: "Okay," I say. "I'll reimburse you for all the electricity I use."
She narrows her eyes. "How will you know?"
"Hm. I tell you what. I'll keep track of how long the saw is running. It's rated at thirteen amps, so at a hundred twenty volts I can calculate the number of kilowatt hours. Then we can calculate the cost."
From the look on her face, I can see that she doesn't know an ampere from a volt from a kilowatt hour. But she nods, pensively. "Okay," she says. "Cash."
I try to look as serious as I can. "I shouldn't pay cash," I say. "This will be a business expense, so I'll have to write you a check from my business account. Otherwise my accountant will get angry."
Bella thinks it over for a moment. "All right," she says. "I'll take a check. But then the IRS will think I'm getting taxable income, so you'll have to add twenty percent."
"Um, okay."
"Make it thirty."
"All right. I'll add thirty percent."
I repair the fence. It takes a couple of hours, which includes about five minutes total of running the power saw. Let's call it six minutes, which is an even 1/10 of an hour.
I put the tools away, coil the extension cord, ring the doorbell.
"I'm ready to pay," I say. "Shall we do the numbers?"
"Go ahead," she says.
I press buttons on my calculator, walking her through it:
13 amps X 120 volts = 1560 watts, or 1.56 kilowatts.I can see she doesn't follow any of this. "So you'll pay?" she says.
0.1 hour X 1.56 = 0.156 kilowatt hours of usage.
Current electric rate [this is 1981] is 6 cents per kilowatt hour.
Therefore I owe you 0.156 X 6 cents = 0.936 cents.
Adding 30 percent for tax purposes, 0.936 X 1.3 = 1.2168 cents.
I write a check. Generously, I round the 1.2168 up to a full 2 cents. Signing it with a flourish, I tear the check loose and hand it to her.
Holding the check at arm's length, squinting, she makes a careful study — date, signature, amount.
"Fair and square," she says.
Money in hand, stepping back into the house, Bella closes the door.
Hilarious, though with inflation and the soaring cost of electricity it's probably 12 cents now.
ReplyDeleteI don't actually remember the price of electricity back then. It might've been lower (or higher) than 6 cents per kilowatt hour. But the total expense, I remember calculating, was 2 cents. Anyway, I kept a straight face through the entire transaction.
ReplyDelete