$5.01, really?

I was visiting with my girlfriend this past weekend, and she said something really interesting (not that she doesn't do that all the time, but this was particularly interesting)

It was interesting not just because it was right, but also because it sounded EXACTLY like something I would say!

She asked me if I had seen the new Arby's commercial.

I hadn't, but that didn't matter, she was about to explain it to me.

"Why," she wondered "would Arby's promote their combos and set a price at five dollars and one penny?!?"

"Why the extra penny?" she continued, getting more and more animated as she built herself into an anti-Arby's rant.

The combos, near as I can tell (and now that I've seen the commercials for myself) are just their sandwiches with a drink and fries.

The commercials harp on the fact that the combos are worth the extra penny, or something like that.

My girlfriend just couldn't get it. And I agreed. Why in the world would you create a huge campaign to announce that your combo meal is incrementally MORE expensive than all the other options (Subway, Quizno's, KFC).

Maybe they're trying to establish themselves as THE premium crappy sandwich place.

I don't know much about Arby's, having been opposed to them ever since I heard they were calling their roast beef sandwiches, 'Roastburgers'.

Those things aren't burgers! As someone who cooks 90% of their own meals on a George Foreman grill, I know what the heck a burger is and what it is not and it is NOT a roast beef sandwich!

See, see how animated I got just there? That's how she got.

Either we're more similar than I thought, or I'm rubbing off on her

Small world, this consulting thing

I've only been in consulting for a few weeks, and I've been amazed at the number of small world coincidences I've already run into through training and my first project:

- During a training exercise, our hypothetical project team had a meeting interrupted by two more senior guys playing 'partners.' As soon as they walked in, I immediately recognized one as my interviewer from internship recruiting at school for another firm. Of course, I didn't get that job, but I had always thought it was because I bombed the other interview so I didn't feel too awkward.

- In getting involved with the Chicago Booth recruiting team, I had to get in touch with the team's recruiting head. When I finally found him, it turned out he was formerly the recruiting head for a different consulting firm. I met him during internship recruiting too, and it was my discussion with him that got me my interview. Weird.

- On the first day of my project, we're sitting in a team room at the client (a large media company that will remain undisclosed). The client team is coming down, and when they come in I recognize the most senior guy. He used to be a pretty senior guy at another big consulting firm, working almost exclusively in media and entertainment. I had spent a good half an hour talking with him at a recruiting even before he jumped off the consulting ship.

Totally weird...I'm half expecting to run into every other person that didn't give me a job during business school...

That would be an awful lot of people