Question

Suppose the employees are allowed to process multiple orders at a time, but the preference would be to finish the orders of clients who placed their orders earlier. Also assume that the fourth client came in only at 10 : 35. Between 10 : 00 and 10 : 30, for how many minutes is exactly one of the employees idle?

Answer 1

Between 10:00 and 10:30, there is 15 minutes of idle time for one of the employees.

Step-by-step explanation:

To find the minutes in which one of the employees is idle between 10:00 and 10:30, we need to calculate the total time spent on processing orders during that period and subtract it from 30 minutes (10:30 - 10:00). From the given information, we know that it takes an average of 6 minutes for three customers to arrive. Therefore, in 30 minutes, 15 customers are expected to arrive. The fourth customer came at 10:35, so in the first 35 minutes, 20 customers (4 + 6 + 6 + 4) were already served. This means that during the first 35 minutes, there is a total of 15 minutes of idle time (30 - 20).