Students arrive at the Administrative Services Office at an average of one every 15 minutes, and their requests take on average 10 minutes to be processed. The service counter is staffed by only one clerk, Judy, who works eight hours per day. Assume Poisson arrivals and exponential service times. The managers of the Administrative Services Office estimate that the time a student spends waiting costs them (due to loss of goodwill, that is, students hate waiting in line before getting served) $10 per hour. To reduce the time a student spends waiting, they know that they need to improve Judys processing time (see the last problem). They are currently considering the following two options:

a. Install a computer system, with which Judy expects to be able to complete a student request 40 percent faster (from 2 minutes per request to 1 minute and 12 seconds, for example).

b. Hire another temporary clerk working in parallel serving a single queue, who will work at the same rate as Judy.

If the computer costs $99.50 to operate per day, while the temporary clerk gets paid $75 per day, is Judy right to prefer the hired help? Assume Poisson arrivals and exponential service times.