If I Were in the Fortune Cookie Game

I love Chinese food.  At least, I love the heavily Americanized version that they serve at the buffets around here, which probably bares as close a resemblance to the genuine thing as a cheeseburger does to a chandelier.  Still, I love all those little spicy pieces of chicken served in all kinds of different sweet sauces.  After I've helped myself to my third or forth heaping plate, the server usually shows up with a bill, along with a fortune cookie for each person at the table.  I'm not a huge fan of the actual cookie.  It pretty much tastes like a piece of cardboard covered in envelope glue.  But I do find the fortunes entertaining.  I have noticed though, that as frequently as I dine at these buffets and as frequently as I open these cookies, I have never once gotten a duplicate fortune.  Not that that's too incredible.  There are probably thousands upon thousands of fortunes out there.  Still, it would have to be a possibility if some measure wasn't taken to prevent it.    

And prevent it they must.  If someone were to recieve a duplicate fortune even once, it would destroy the entire mystique of the fortune cookie.  So how do they do it?  Even though there are thousands of fortunes, it's highly unlikely that they print a unique fortune for each and every cookie.  They must print thousands, possibily millions of copies of each fortune, depending on the size of the cookie operation in question.  Even given the odds involved in an entirely random distribution, sooner or later someone would be bound to get the same fortune.  There would have to be a system.   

I suppose I could have asked someone at the restaurant, but I probably would have gotten nothing but blank stares in return.  It possible that it never even crossed the minds of the people back at the fortune cookie home office that any of this could even be an issue.  They probably just print the fortunes, box them up, ship them out, and take their chances.  Still, I took some time out of my busy, busy schedule to solve this crucial problem, and I offer my solution to any fortune cookie entrepeneurs out there, free of charge.  I know.  I know.  No need to thank me.  I'm more than happy to help.    

Ok, so here's how it would work: Let's say that you have 500,000 unique fortunes.  You take these fortunes and split them up into 50 sets of 10,000 and you number and box each set seperately.  No set contains a duplicate fortune and each set contains fortunes completely different from the other sets, but each particular set contains the same ten thousand fortunes.  Then, the restaurants on your client list would have to keep track of which sets they've already ordered.  Maybe they'd have a sheet or something and they'd cross off the sets they've already ordered, making sure not to re-order the same set.  This way any one particular restaurant would never get a duplicate fortune until they had gone through the entire series of 500,000 and yet the fortune cookie company could still print millions of copies of each fortune.  If you really wanted to play it safe, you could issue a new series of 500,000 every year, as long as your warehouse Confusius can keep up with that kind of output.   

Of course, there's always the possibility that the customer could go to a different restaurant  currently working from the same set, but hey...nothing's perfect, and the odds would still be greatly dimished.  With no system, with just a completely random distribution, the odds would be 1 in 500,000 that a repeat customer would get a duplicate fortune and that number would divide in half with each return visit.  Sooner or later it would happen, and the customer's faith in those magical cookies would be tragically crushed forever.  

Maybe there's already a system like this, and I've wasted my valuable time reinventing it.  More likely, no one cares.  But hey, if you're going to hide pithy little notes inside of cookies in the hopes of having people believe that they're a personal message meant only for them, then you've got to put some effort in maintaining the illusion.  Anyway, it's none of my concern.  I just came for the spicy chicken.