Jack's first job - and a costing lesson

Through a weird sequence of events (involving Jack's bike sitting outside), Jack accepted his first job as a doormail deliverer. The gig involves walking to 100 houses and getting paid $.15 per each doormail delivered. Jack did the math and realized that he would make $15. He thought this sounded like a good deal. The first time went well.

When the second round came (roughly every six weeks), the doormail guy asked Jack if he would consider doing 300 houses. Jack quickly did the math and with $45 in his mind he quickly said 'yes'.
Although after some brief reflection, he asked if I would help him. I told him that I would drive him to the right neighborhood but that I thought he should do the bulk of the work by himself. I told him that if he thought he wanted help he could consider hiring Theo to help. He very quickly said, 'Yah, but he is going to want to get paid too!'

After I explained that it was only appropriate that Jack pay anyone who helped him with his deliveries, Jack did decided to ask Theo to help. He went downstairs to negotiate. He came back up and said that Theo would help. I was pleased with this result and asked what they had agreed. Jack said he had told Theo he would pay him $10 to help for an hour.

I then gently told Jack that paying someone by the hour when you are getting paid per item is a dangerous agreement. I asked Jack what he would do if Theo only delivered 20 things in that hour. His eyes got really big when he realized that he may have just struck a bad deal. He then said, 'I don't think Theo would do that, do you?'  I laughed to myself. And then Jack went and agreed to split the route with Theo. Jack would do one side of the road and Theo would do the other and each would get 50% of the pay. Deal done!