Our friendly (not fiercely) independent local brewery did a holiday glass giveaway on each of the four Tuesdays leading up to Christmas. I learned this serendipitously on Tuesday, November 28 (the first glass giveaway), when I stopped by the brewery at the not unreasonable time of 5 pm to have a beer in between dropping my son off for and then picking him up from swim practice. I ordered my beer and got a glass. Fun! And Molly the bartender said there would be a different glass available the next week and the week after that and the week after that.

So the next Tuesday I recruited James and Danny to meet me at the brewery for a beer and to get the next glass. But instead of 5 pm, I suggested the slightly less reasonable time (to start drinking on a Tuesday) of 4:15 pm (the brewery opens at 3). That would still give me time to drop off my son at swim practice, but I also wanted to make certain we got glasses.

The first sign of trouble when I got to the brewery a little before 4:15 pm was that there was nowhere to park. This is Columbia, Missouri. There is always somewhere to park. That’s sort of one of the points of living in Columbia, Missouri.

And so it went. As we were walking up to the brewery, others were leaving and saying that there were no more glasses. They’d run out before 4 pm! (Apparently a lesser-known corollary to Moore’s Law is that when a brewery has weekly glass giveaways, supplies last half as long as they did the week before). 

So fast forward to the following Tuesday, which also happened to be James’s birthday. At 2:30 pm I said, “Reasonableness be damned, are we walking over?” And James said, “Yes.” And Danny said, “Hold on. I need to finish something.” And Garrett, overhearing all of this, said, “I’m coming too!”

I warned Danny that he might miss out, but he said he just needed five minutes. As CIO, I probably shouldn’t tell team members not to do their jobs in order to go day-drinking on a Tuesday and so I said, “Ok, we’ll see you there.”

We got there at 2:37 pm and we were the only ones there, so we took a walk around the block (risky in hindsight!) to get our steps in. We got back to the entrance at 2:44 pm and just as we did, 10 cars pulled into the lot. Thankfully, we were still first in line when they opened at 3 pm, but the line was around the block.

With no sign of Danny…

When Danny finally did show (nothing takes just five minutes unless you are ruthless), I said to James and Garrett, as we were sipping from our holiday giveaway glasses, that while I was no card counter, I thought Danny’s chances of getting a glass were slim. And so it went. Ten minutes later a dejected Danny came down the stairs with a beer in a non-holiday giveaway glass. It was 3:30 pm (Moore’s Law!). 

So we made a plan for the next week to be out in front of the brewery (or at least check to make sure no line had developed) by 2 pm. The lesson, of course, is a well worn one around these parts, which is that certainty has a cost and that it’s typically expensive. In this example, in order to ensure that we would get a $5 glass (admittedly, a limited edition $5 glass), we were prepared to spend an hour of our time. And when we did the math in our heads, the trade was worth it (though not everyone in our office agreed). 

Funny enough, the same week, one of our businesses was given the opportunity to lease warehouse space across the street from its current facility. This was a good opportunity because space in that area didn’t often come open and new space would be needed to accommodate our 5-10-year growth goals. The thing was though (1) we didn’t need new space yet and couldn’t know for sure exactly when we would and (2) it would be really expensive to lease it now and carry it just to know for certain that we had nearby space in the future if we needed it. 

In that case when we ran the numbers, the trade wasn’t worth it, so now we still have stress about future space needs, but more money in our pocket. Will a day come when we regret that decision? Potentially. And as Danny learned well, there are few worse feelings than missing an opportunity you know you had the opportunity not to miss.

Have a great weekend.

-Tim

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