our economics correspondent, paul solman has the story. it's part of our ongoing reporting, "making sense," which airs every thursday on the newshour. >> as a single person living on my own, the only reason i have so much stuff in my fridge is because somebody else has bothered to do the shopping for me. >> reporter: when doctor emma stanton moved to boston this spring, work left little time for prepping her new apartment. >> it was cleaned when i moved in, which was about nine days ago. >> reporter: or choosing a new coffee maker. >> i just asked for particular recommendations, and this was one of three they suggested. >> reporter: cleaning her clothes. >> this is my laundry. i just chuck it in here. the alfred comes and picks it up. >> reporter: and who exactly is "alfred?" a new online service, the company's name is "hello alfred," named after batman'sultimate butler. >> there's a problem with the graphite sir. >> reporter: who caters to your every need. >> let me suggest you try to avoid landing on your head. >> reporter: now if you re

economics correspondent paul solman explores why some restaurants are requiring customers to pay for meal ahead of time. it's part of our ongoing reporting, "making sense," which airs every thursday on the newshour. >> good afternoon, rpm italian. >> reporter: a popular mid-range restaurant in chicago. looking for a prime time table a few weeks out? >> it looks like i can do 5:00 or you're looking at about 10:00. >> reporter: reservations, it seems, are a problem at, and for, pretty much every eatery tonier than arby's, all the way up to alinea, #1 in chicago on tripadvisor, 26th in the world says restaurant magazine. to co-owner nick kokonas, reservations can be a dance of deception between restaurant and customer. >> i think we've all had that experience where we call a restaurant, and we feel like the person's lying to them. it's evidenced by the fact that when you show up at an 8:00 reservation on a saturday, your table is hardly ever waiting for you. >> reporter: why is that? >> one, there's a no-show rate, of 10% percent, 12% percent. >> reporter: so, restaurants are overbookin

economics correspondent paul solman reports. it's part of our weekly segment "making sense," which airs every thursday on the newshour. >> time to make the donuts. >> reporter: fred the baker, icon for the freshness of dunkin' donuts more than 30 years ago. >> time to make the donuts! >> reporter: fred was a fiction, but the reality for one dunkin' donuts worker looked a lot like the ads. >> i'm working 75 hours a week, or 80 hours a week. >> reporter: for years, guhsahn marzook worked fred-like hours as a salaried manager at this outlet outside boston. problem is, he never saw one cent in overtime. >> if you work 40 hours, or if you work 100 hours, it's the same pay. >> reporter: divide marzook's hours by his barely $800 a week salary, and, on a per hour basis... >> i'm making only $9, $10 an hour. which is less, even lower than the regular employees, what they are making. >> reporter: under current law you get time-and-a-half for every hour you work in a week past 40, unless you make more than $23,600 a year and you're an exec

. >> ifill: economics correspondent paul solman spends a lot of time trying to explain and assess why markets, individuals, consumers, and businesses behave the way they do. but there's a growing school of thought that says the traditional answers to those questions may not be the correct ones. paul caught up with one of the leading thinkers changing the way we look at economic behavior, as part of his series "making sense," which airs every thursday on the newshour. >> reporter: millennium park richard thaler an academic revolutionary, who thinks his field economics, has a weirdly distorted view of human behavior that we're all rational maximizers, mathematical machines, who use our unusually big brains to wisely calculate every decision as we strive to get to the top, thus creating perfect markets to make us better off. yet, says thaler-- >> after the '87 crash, when the market fell 20% in a day, and the internet bubble, when the nasdaq went from 5,000 to 1400, and then the real estate bubble, which led to a financial crisis from which we're still trying to extricate ourselves the i