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Comment by foxhop | Hacker News Reader

The way you fix this is by making each 5m late cost 2 gallon of milk. If you are late for 15m that's 6 gallons of milk, an operational burden has been passed to the late parent. It's embarrassing to bring in 6 gallons of milk, an inconvenience to buy and deliver it, and an effective deterrent.

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Or draw a different conclusion from the situation: parents are clearly willing to pay a premium for the daycare to stay open later. So raise the price for that service high enough that it's worthwhile for the daycare (including hiring additional staff as needed or paying overtime).

> If the parents were fined a day's daycare fee for being ten minutes late you can bet their attitude would change.

I think upping the pain works better. What's a daycare going to do with so many gallons of milk?

That amount of milk would last a couple days if snack is included in tuition. 20-40 glasses of milk, twice a day.

If for some reason you have too many gallons of milk, you can also use toilet paper, 10 rolls per 5 minutes. You can never have too much toilet paper, some late parents even buy the soft stuff too! lol

A huge fine isn't always the best deterrent and it makes people generally mad at your child care center.

Everyone gets a chuckle out of seeing a dad walk in with three jugs in each hand... It's a light hearted walk of shame and it really works to deter late pickups which is the real goal.

It's not so great for the staff either. Instead of waiting an extra 10 minutes for a parent that's 10 minutes late, they now have to wait 30 minutes because the parent had to make a 20 minute detour to the grocery store to buy milk.

> A huge fine isn't always the best deterrent and it makes people generally mad at your child care center.

EDIT: You can make this revenue neutral. Give parents a discount at the end of every month out of the money they collect in late fines. People on time at a better-than-average rate will come out ahead.

The milk is payable the next day during drop off. The point is to discourage parents to _never_ be late. It often ruins the staff's plans.

The very last late parent of the day has to dispose of all the milk.

By drinking it ...?

Either end is fine.

I think what you'd find is that people would just start using a different service which didn't treat them like children.

If they are chronically late, and the person feels like they are being slighted as a child, this is also a decent way to "fire" your customer. You don't need customers who don't respect the agreed rules of your service.

Another alternative is calling the police, because at what point is the child considered abandoned?

I think I would prefer the light hearted milk or toilet paper errand.

You're kidding, right?

It's actually kind of brilliant -- you're fining them in time instead of money. They've already demonstrated that they value being able to use money to buy time flexibility, so this is a fine that hurts.

No... it’s an invitation for harried parents to show up with an IOU, a store card, or the cheapest ripest milk they could find.

Charging them double fees is more like it.

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