Several years back, a national restaurant chain sent out a memo to all waitresses explaining that the new policy was to ask each customer who requested water whether a lemon slice was also desired. The memo further explained that each lemon slice cost the company one cent and with the approximated number of waters with lemon served to customers who did not want the lemon, this cost the company a sizeable loss of revenue
annually. This decision could have been justified from the utilitarian perspective. The number of people inconvenienced (i.e. number of servers) was far outweighed by the number of people who benefited (e.g. customers who did not want lemon polluting their water, the prep cooks who sliced the lemons, the bussers who did not have to throw away unwanted lemon slices, and hypothetically the restaurant owners and stockholders who would enjoy increased net profits though cost savings).