Argument 15 求拍砖(本人第一篇argument习作）

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By referring to the customers' complaint and servers' reports, the manager considers that their customers do not care the difference between butter and margarine. And then brings out the conclusion that the substitution, margarine has taken place of butter, has little influence on their customers. There may be alternative explanations for the evidence taken by the manager.

The argument is weakened by possible alternative explanations for only 2 percent of customers have complained. It is likely that some customers have not discovered this situation yet, but this does not mean they will not see it forever. There is also the possibility that some customers who are not satisfied with the behavior of the restaurant will neither complain nor come to the restaurant once more. As a result, the restaurant may loses these clients forever. What is worse, some customers may tell their kins and friends, or even propagate the situation through Internet, which may forfeit more costumers or potential clients of the restaurant. The manager cannot evaluate the effect rationally unless he/she exclude these possible explanations mentioned above.

The manager also fails to rule out several explanations for servers' report that some customers asking for butter do not complain when they are given margarine. The scope and the validity of the report is not clear. For example, these servers may only observe a small part of all customers, and spates of clients' complaint is not cognized by these servers. Some servers may not tell the manager truth because they are afraid of being fired by the manager. Furthermore, some guests may not express their anger to servers but to a national food security officer instead. With these possible alternative explanations, we cannot estimate customers' attitude according to servers' report.

Further, the manager thinks that customers either are not able to differentiate butter and margarine or use the term 'butter' to refer to butter or margarine. She/he ignores the possibility that some customers can make a distinction between butter and margarine, but they do not tell servers and choose other restaurants. Even worse, some clients may gather evidence privately and provide these news cues to medias. To strengthen the argument, the manager would benefit from considering the posibility mentioned above carefully and then make a more reasonable conclusion.

In sum, the argument is logically flawed and therefore unconvincing as it stands. There are several possible alternative explanations of customers' complaint and servers' report and the manager fails to give more information to rule out these factors.  To strengthen it the manager must analyze all the factors I have presented carefully and evaluate the impact with a more objective scope.