Based on Total Cost
(Quinn's desk, Tuesday afternoon. Two browser tabs open.)
Quinn: Registration's done, we're both in. Now the flights, and you're not going to like the flights.
Diego: How bad?
Quinn: The conference is in Providence. That's the eastern side of the country, and nothing from here goes there cheaply in one hop.
Diego: Give me the two numbers.
Quinn: Direct is four hundred and eighty each. Leaves Sunday at noon, lands Sunday evening.
Diego: And the other one?
Quinn: Two hundred and ten. But at that price it leaves Saturday morning, sits in Chicago for five hours and forty minutes, and lands at eleven-fifty on Saturday night.
Diego: So we'd need the Saturday night in the hotel as well.
Quinn: A hundred and ninety a room. Each of us.
Diego: Okay. So we save two hundred and seventy each, and we pay one hundred and ninety of it straight back.
Quinn: Eighty dollars each, for about thirty extra hours of traveling.
Diego: That's under three dollars an hour.
Quinn: Before airport food.
Diego: I could sleep in Chicago.
Quinn: You can't sleep sitting up. I flew to Austin with you.
Diego: I was reading.
Quinn: You were asleep with a book on your face.
Diego: Fine. Book the direct one.
Quinn: Already did. This morning.
Diego: Then why did we just do all of that?
Quinn: Because the travel form has a box marked reason, and I can't put down that I like sleeping.
Diego: Write: direct flight chosen based on total cost, including the additional hotel night.
Quinn: Say that again, slowly.
Diego: Based on total cost, including the additional hotel night.
Quinn: That's the most educational thing that'll happen to me this month, and the conference is next week.