Panel Round One
NPR
Saturday, December 13, 2014
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Our panelists answer questions about the week's news: Steamed Lawyer With Sour Beef; Nutrageous.
Transcript
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
We want to remind everybody they can join us most weeks right here at the Chase Bank Auditorium in beautiful downtown Chicago, Illinois. For tickets and more information, just go over to WBEZ.org. You can also find a link at our website which happens to be waitwait.npr.org.
Right now pane, it is of course time for you to answer some questions about this week's news. Charlie, Ben Edelman is a Harvard graduate with degrees in law, economics and statistics, including a Ph.D. He also teaches negotiation at the Harvard Business School. So this week, he used that immense brainpower and expertise to absolutely nail an unscrupulous business that robbed him of what?
CHARLIE PIERCE: Four dollars.
SAGAL: Four dollars.
PIERCE: On his bill for Chinese food.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Exactly right. Now if your Chinese food take-out order came in at $4 more than you expected, you'd probably shrug it off. That's why you couldn't get into Harvard.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: So basically this guy orders Chinese food from the Szechuan Garden Restaurant of Brookline, Massachusetts. They overcharge him $4. So of course he attacks them with countless emails threatening legal action and demanding $12 in damages. And you're saying, well, why did he - how did he go from $4 that they overcharged him to $12?
PIERCE: And citing statutes to do it.
SAGAL: He cited statutes. He said I will report you to the government, I know these people. To punish them, he said you're going to have to pay a fine to the government once I report you so why don't you just pay me the fine right now?
PIERCE: It's basically the approach the average southern sheriff has with speeding tickets.
SAGAL: I know - terrifying.
PIERCE: Give me $100 and you won't have to go to court.
SAGAL: What's amazing about this is that a guy with degrees in law, economics and statistics from Harvard is behaving exactly the way you'd expect a guy with degrees in law, economics and statistics from Harvard.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Tom, you'll be happy to know that airlines are making sure their service is tiptop. A Korean air executive forced the plane she was on to go back to the gate - back to the gate with us right now because she was not satisfied with what?
TOM BODETT: Korean airline - they hadn't taken off?
SAGAL: They hasn't yet - well, what happened was is they were taxiing out to take off to fly across the ocean to Korea, and she said no, no, no, no, this unacceptable. We must go back to the gate because she was unhappy with what?
BODETT: The coffee was not bitter enough.
SAGAL: You are close - the coffee.
BODETT: Was not hot enough?
SAGAL: No.
PIERCE: Was too hot?
SAGAL: You're - I'll give you a hint. What do you mean, she said, they're unsalted?
PIERCE: Oh, the peanuts.
SAGAL: The nuts.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: She was unsatisfied with the nuts.
(LAUGHTER)
PIERCE: I got a ding for that, I'm glad. I didn't do anything but thanks for the ding.
SAGAL: Miss Heather Cho is the vice president in charge of service for Korean Air. And by completely unconnected coincidence, the daughter of the airline's CEO. But she is not one to let standards slip, especially when it comes to her macadamia nuts that were served to her in a bag rather than on a plate. That was her issue. So she demanded that the flight attendant who had so grossly insulted her by giving her a, well, a nut sack...
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: ...Be removed from the flight. And in order to do that, they had to turn the plane around. She did not get her first choice, that the flight attendant be made to walk a plank and 30,000 feet.
PIERCE: Was this North Korea?
SAGAL: Yeah, you'd think.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Coming up, what's your sign? It's the singles Buff the Listener game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play. We'll be back in a minute with more of WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME from NPR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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