Friends vs Strangers

Suppose now, that you need use your computer to do a certain job. At this time another person walks to you. He could be a friend or a stranger. If it is a stranger you may not move because you got the system first but if its a friend, he may make statements like - "Hey could you please let me use the comp for 5 mins. You continue after that." and you may as well oblige. To a stranger, you are not going to move even if he wants to take just a minute. What is the logic behind all this?


Take 2 cases

Case 1: Ok, now consider that you let your friend use the computer and assume here that you need an hour to finish your work. He will probably be done in 5 mins as he says.
So your friend now waits for only 5 mins to finish his work and you have to wait for 65mins(1hr of the time taken for you to finish the work + 5 mins of waiting time by which time your friend finishes).

The total time that is used by you and your friend together would be 65 + 5 = 70 mins.

Case 2: Now suppose that you insist that you finish before you let your friend use the computer. Then, you take your 60 mins to finish. Your friend waits all this while and then after you finish, he takes an additional 5 mins to get his work done, thus totally waiting 65 mins to complete his 5 min work.

Now total time used by both together would be 60 mins(for you) + 65 mins(for your friend) = 125 mins.

So, If you let him use the computer first, you end up saving (125-70) = 55 mins of time.

But if its a stranger, you may not give him the computer, thus you end up with the situation in case 2 where u don't care about how much time he has to wait. Your work is completed in 60 mins and thats ideal for you. If u opt for case 1, with the stranger, note that you would complete your work in 65 mins, which is 5 mins more. For case 2, though you finish the work by 60 mins, there's a lot of waste in time for the stranger and you probably don't care.


Next time, if someone requests you to just hold-on for a min, so that he could finish his work, just do it(even if its a stranger). You would be saving a lot of the nation's time.