An irrational meal
February 19th was the one-year anniversary for the publication of Predictably Irrational.
To celebrate I called the chef at Rue Cler — Jason Bissey — and asked him to make an irrational dinner for us.
Here is what he came up with:
As soon as we sat at the table they gave us the check and thanked us for coming — asking us to come again soon.
Next, we each got a randomly chosen dessert accompanied by cappuccino & espresso served in wine glasses.
Jason stopped by a few minutes later, spilled some wood chips on the floor, handed me a broom & dustpan and asked me to sweep the floor (which I did, and I did a good job at it).
For the entrée: they asked who didn’t eat seafood and who didn’t eat pork and made sure to give the person who didn’t eat seafood the scallops and the person who didn’t eat pork the pork dish.
The appetizer was next. It was delicious but a few seconds after I started eating Jason came out of the kitchen and as he walked by, he helped himself to a few of the shoestring onions from my plate and just keept on walking.
Soup and salad were next. We were given large serving spoons to eat the soup with and very, very small forks for the salad. The server stopped by a few times to make sure that everything tasted horrible and that we were having a miserable time.
At the end, she asked who had the scallops and then said “Well you’ll be needing these” as she handed those who had the scallops an Imodium AD pill in a tiny plastic cup (an Antidiarrheal medicine).
Jason – Thanks a lot. I don’t think we will forget this meal for a long time.
Every child’s dream: dessert first! Congrats on your anniversary.
Dan:
Sounds like you guys had a lot fun. Congratss on the one year anniversary!
I came across your work while doing research for the e-business service line of my company, EDYLA Business Consulting.
I received an email for an invitation to the MIT Center for Digital Business Symposium – http://www.mitcio.com, I was especially curious about one of the topics to be discussed, “The emerging economics of exponential experimentation”.
So I went to the MIT site – http://ebusiness.mit.edu/research/index.html and found your name that led me to one of your Youtube videos – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhjUJTw2i1M where I really liked your example about the irrational behavior about buying a subscription to the Economist.
I think your work could be applied to helping companies understand better how customers’ buy online. I plan to pick up your book and look forward to implementing your research to help my customers sell more stuff to more people more often.
Cheers,
Edgar Sanchez
Toronto, Canada
http://www.edyla.com
Prof. Ariely,
Not unhappy 1st anniversary!
I rationally don’t wish that you don’t keep writing such unpredictably addicting books. Never since I read the book have I not remembered to keep reading your blog.
Uneconomically yours,
-peeds
Great blog, and congratulatinos on your anniversary. I don’t know that your meal was irrational, but more bizarre and anti-social. Irrational for me wouold have been a scallop omlette, with potato pancakes, and a fruit soup. Irrational is no excuse for bad manners or upside down meal order — it should hold quirky surprise and the delight of something approached from a new direction — not thinly disguised psychopathology. Unless I don’t get irrational.
The only thing that could have been more irrational, to me, would have been for you to make the chef a dinner at your house.
I would love to hear more about this topic.