[sac2171]

A lot of people are mentioning the idea that this should actually be a continuous curve... As someone who has used the cafeteria for a couple months, I would say this is most likely an over optimization. You are creating a complication for every transaction, and making it so now there is now set points where you can save the most money, namely at the beginning/end of the window. Which actually creates more of the two 'two hump system' swombat, saalweachter, smickie and others have mentioned. Just like there is a natural gradient to lunch from 12 to 1, you still get a gradient in the discounted hours. 11:30 isn't a better time to eat lunch then 11:55, It's simply an attempt to split up lunch times so that the cafeteria can effectively have 3 rush hour instead of 1. And since traffic effects aren't linear, you get a much quicker overall experience as a result. "The people standing around" is overplayed, Those are the people's elevator rides who were are little shorter/longer than expected.