Consider a post of?ce that is run by two clerks. Suppose that when Mr. Smith enters the system he discovers that Mr. Jones is being served by one of the clerks and Mr. Brown by the other. Suppose also that Mr. Smith is told that his service will begin as soon as either Jones or Brown leaves. If the amount of time that a clerk spends with a customer is exponentially distributed with mean 1/λ, what is the probability that, of the three customers, Mr. Smith is the last to leave the post of?ce?