The HR Trilemma: Which Door Decides Your Fate?
Ch
Since we had so much fun with the never-gonna-happen Red-Blue Button dilemma, I present to you the HR trilemma. A New & Improved puzzler with 50% more lemma!
You have been called to HR. You suspect one of your co-workers caught you reading this site during business hours on a company machine. Strictly verboten!
Your appointment is at 1 PM, so you head to the HR department, now the largest in all the company. There are three HR Employee Adjustments offices, behind door A, door B, or door C.
You know that behind one of the doors are two male Boomers, ready to retire, two of the last three holdovers of the now defunct Personnel Department. Behind another door are two fresh female HR graduates from a prestigious Ivy league university (82% female enrollment). And behind the third door in yet another female fresh graduate (which purple hair) and the third male Boomer, who drew the short straw and was tasked to train the fresh graduate.
The email says you are to show up at 1 PM and go into any of three offices, A, B, or C, and receive your talking to. Behind each door is a box of tissues, but only the rooms with females have fresh full boxes.
As you are arriving, one of the male boomers walks out of door B and leaves (for the day, and maybe forever, for all you know).
It should go without saying you want to maximize the chance of entering a room with a male Boomer. Which door do you now go in and why? No points without, as they say, showing your work. There will be no recognition for merely guessing a door. Say why you chose the door you did.
The answer tomorrow!
Many of you will get this. But I decided to remove the temptation to read ahead and avoid thinking. I won’t forbid use of AI, because I’m curious what answers these computer model would give, and on which platform.
Here are the various ways to support this work:
The probabilities of all outcomes must total 1. So if you choose the room where the male boomer exited, you have a 50-50 chance of getting a male boomer. That means the remaining 50-50 chance is spread over the other two rooms. So to maximize your probability of choosing a male boomer, choosing the exited room is best.
I'd go in the same door the boomer came out of. My reasoning is that the old boomer training the newb wouldn't be leaving for the day so there should be one boomer left behind the door the boomer came out of.
It is of course possible the newb drove the boomer trainer to madness and they simply left in a huff but that then leaves you a fifty/fifty chance of randomly choosing the remaining two boomers' door.
Either way, I'd have at least some chance of a sympathetic hearing from a boomer, zero chance from a newb.