Do they teach simple maths in schools any more? Went for breakfast today and the bill came to $20.11. Left the tip on the table and presented the young cashier with a credit card and a quarter and a penny: "Would you round the credit card charge to $20. Give me 15 cents from this change and we are even," I said

The cashier picked up a small calculator and deducted 11 from the 26 I gave her to be sure she got it right. Left shaking head.

Yes, they teach simple math in schools.

But, just as it's always been, not everyone learns it...

Maybe math is not her strong suit. Maybe she excels in being a hostess. Maybe she has been trained by her employer to verify each cash transaction with a calculator so not to be shortchanged or overcharge customers.

So, I'd give her some leeway without knowing more.

I got to be honest here and say:

What?

It ain't the math that is confusing there, it's the reasons. If I were the cashier I would have used the calculator as a ruse to try and process why someone would ask me to do something like that.

Exactly my thought.

My first impulse was to suggest using a credit card: no change needed. But then I realized you were using a credit card, but converting a totally simple transaction into one involving two methods of payment, and returning small change.

I was a math major. Doing the math is not the problem. Following the logic is. I probably would have used a calculator too, to let the WTF in my mind settle back into the ooze at the bottom of my brain.

But we love you anyway, in spite of your potential OCD. :)

Yeah, it's probably the split tender that threw her. From my five years in retail, a split tender is highly unusual.

Sometimes I pay in cash with an eye to getting a certain type of change back. I see clerks look puzzled when I do this, so I just tell them, "type the amount into the register." Then they stand all amazed when a nice, tidy amount pops up as my required change.

I've noticed that a number of people behind the deli counter have no idea how to convert a quarter pound or a third of a pound into the equivalent decimal amount. So I teach them. If school didn't get the job done, I will.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/19/2018 10:08AM by summer.

LOL, Jabob! Now that's a "head shaking" moment.

I worked in a bank and as a sales clerk. We would never do math in our head. After a while, I could do it very well, and it was helpful in knowing if the sums were correct on the machine, but I would never just rely on my head. We were required to count out aloud, as we gave change back.

In a lot of fast restaurants and convenience stores, the cashier would have taken the 11 cents out of a jar, and said, "Forget about it".

Eleven from 26 hardly even qualifies as maths regardless of the suggested mind numbing conundrum to work it all out.

I don't know why you'd want 15 cents back. Couldn't she have just kept that?

You're getting a lot of static on this.

If you do something repetitious you get into a mind set. Your request was out of the ordinary which caused her to have to get into a different thinking mode. She was probably bewildered.

Wonder why it was important to you that your charge was in round numbers?

"Wonder why it was important to you that your charge was in round numbers?"

For years before I started paying for gas at the pump with my card, I'd be very particular about stopping the pump at an even dollar so I didn't have to worry about change when I paid inside.

For what seemed like years after paying for gas at the pump with my card, I'd still be very particular about stopping the pump at an even dollar so that I didn't have to worry about...(!)...what was I doing?

I now just fill the tank regardless of whether the pump stops at an even dollar.

I'm a big boy. I can handle the static but I think you are missing the point which is her failure to be able do a simple subtraction of eleven cents from 26 cents without the use of a calculator. It would have been no different if I had handed her a twenty and 26 cents. Who hasn't done that many times. By the time she got to the mighty subtraction issue she had already run the charge for the $20 so it had nothing to do with the suggested complexity (even if it was remotely that) of my request.

26-11 is what teachers call "mental math." Some people can do it naturally, but many can't. What seems easy for you is not easy for many people.

The Common Core math curriculum which is currently being widely taught in the U.S. is attempting to formally teach to all children what bright people used to figure out on their own. I've spent a good chunk of my year for the past few years teaching young children how to split the 11 into a 10 and a 1, and to subtract the 10 first (which is a previously taught skill,) and then the 1. We eventually move to the algorithm, but we teach children many different strategies to solve the same problem. The hope is that the children will develop a deeper understanding of math, and will be able to perform the mental math strategies that were formerly only the province of the intelligent.

Now CC math has its good points and its bad points, and I still have mixed feelings about it. Will it work? That is a question that is yet to be answered.

One more thing that I will say is that learning how to use a cash register can rattle even someone who is good at math. All of a sudden you are responsible for hundreds of dollars, and may even be required to make up a shortfall. And customers do lots of nutty things, like changing their minds about what they want to give you after you have already accepted their money and are preparing to give them their change. A customer may do this more than once! While you are wondering why a cashier can't do math on the spot, the cashier is dealing with money for which she is responsible (on a low income,) the rest of the customers in line are giving her the stink eye, and the manager is wondering why her line is growing so long.

Your request for a split-charge for 15 cents was weird and makes no sense, since you were using a card. I don't think it was the math at all - it was the completely abnormal request that throws your routine thinking off at work.

If she's wrong by even ten cents on that till, she could be written up. A couple write-ups for tills that are off, and she could lose her job. Over such a strange, senseless request.

So yes, she was absolutely correct to use a calculator, even for such a small amount.

Lots of replies indicating the split-tender request makes no sense.

I have to admit I'm puzzled as well. Can you clarify the genesis of the request? Maybe you're onto something and we can learn something.

He gives the waitress a tip that adds to the total to a round figure, so the waitress can end up with $5.26 as her tip.

Easier way to do it.

Me, I give cash as a tip. Then they don't have ot pay taxes if they don't want to (I know they should?).

Waitresses carried their tips in their pockets. I always try to give exact change so the tip will be all in folding money and they don't have a bunch of pennies, nickels and dimes weighting down their aprons.

With people now putting tips on credit cards it probably no longer makes sense but I still do it..

I had already left a tip on the table for the waitress. This was the cashier. Plenty of responses that totally obscures my surprise that someone responsible for handling cash couldn't mentally subtract eleven from 26. Perhaps that is acceptably normal for you. It isn't for me.

And you're presuming that the girl couldn't do math, rather than listen to the explanations by everyone why she may have used the calculator.

1) It was a very odd request, for a very odd amount. The illogical nature of it may have thrown her off-kilter into a brain-freeze. Things out of routine will do that, even over seemingly stupid amounts.

2) Company policy may be to do ALL out of ordinary calculations via calculator, no matter how small. She may be required to use the calculator.

3) You had already done the math. She needed to double-check it. Customers do try to scam folks at the till. You may not be that person, but she doesn't know that.

4) Yes, some people cannot do math in their heads. It's just a skill that escapes them. Perhaps she is one of them, and so she used the calculator to ensure she had the correct change.

You stated it's "unacceptable" to you that someone would do math in a way that you deem inferior, despite the crazy request because you couldn't be bothered to do a simple transaction and have eleven cents over an even dollar charged to your card.

You'd rather demean someone over 15 cents because they used a calculator to ensure you received correct change. She did her job.

I think this is more about you wanting to feel superior over someone who was there to "serve" you, and you making an effort to go out of your way to make the job a bit harder with a nonsensical request.

that some years back, my dad was teaching a basic math class in high school. He taught ag mechanics, but of course, he didn't have enough students. All the kids brought a calculator to class and he banned calculators as he said none of them knew how to do basic math in their heads OR on paper.

Not as clever as the ol' "short change" con.

---

Start by peforming some kind of fair trade to get the register open. You can ask for change for a twenty, or maybe buy an item and pay with a large bill. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that you start with a fair trade that involves a lot of bills. This gets the register open and the attendant's head filled with a bunch of numbers, which sets you up for...

PHASE TWO: THE SECOND LAYER (INCLUDING DISTRACTION). This is a trade you'll start on top of the first one. It's a trade that's ALMOST fair, but involves a mistake that makes the short change possible. In our example, while the till is still open, explain that you've got some ones to get rid of, and that you'd like to trade them for a $10 bill. Drop down a stack of $1 bills (actually containing only 9 of them), and scoop up their $10 bill (along with the change from PHASE ONE). Remind the cashier to count those bills and "make sure it's right" (again, this fills the cashier's head with more numbers and builds some time delay).

After the count, they'll notice that your amount is wrong. In this case, we're short $1. It doesn't matter what's wrong with the money you provide: what matters is that the distraction allows you to "correct" the mistake and grab more of the register's cash, using...

PHASE THREE: THE CORRECTION. Now if you were playing fair in the $9 example above, you'd correct it simply by giving them another dollar... But that's not what you'll do. Instead, you'll say "Wait... I don't want to get confused here... We've got nine, right? So let's make that ten... Oh, and I've got some more ones here... We'll make it 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15... and 5 dollars more will make it twenty. We'll just trade for my original twenty instead."

By using time delay, multiple numbers, and a reference back to "the original twenty," we essentially use our stack of nine $1 bills TWICE. First to trade for a $10 bill, then again (added with more money) to trade for a $20.

https://www.seeker.com/money-a-short-con-and-crime-short-change-1791396146.html

I’m old school and use cash for nearly all of my transactions. This type of thing happens to me ALL THE TIME. I would rather carry bills on me (the bigger the better) than change.

Two days ago in SLC I had to top off my rental car with gas before returning it. I put $12 in the tank and handed the cashier $22. She took the $20 bill and handed the two ones back to me. I pushed the two ones back at her and she told me that the gas was $12. I told her that I wanted a ten dollar bill back. At that point she was confused as hell. So I told her to ring me up using the $20 dollar bill, but not to close the register drawer. She did that very slowly, put $8 on the counter, and froze. I then slid the two one dollar bills next to the $8 change and asked if she could give me a $10 bill. Reluctantly she did, and I walked out while she was still confused and scratching her head.

I wish I could say it was a “Utah thing”, but it happens all of the time. And these folks are making $10+ per hour and want a HIGHER minimum wage?? Shaking my head as well.

Just tell the cashier to type in the $22, Jaxson. That's what I do.

Yeah, I'll do that if I am short on time. Otherwise it is kind of fun to watch the meltdown as the connectors in their brain stop functioning.

Around 1977, xxMMooo, I was driving a night cab, and I picked up some Pakistani merchant ship officers. They wanted to treat me to a drink, and we went to a strip joint. A man bought a round, and paid with a $100 bill. A few minutes later, the manager came out, and said it was counterfeit. The officer who had paid was the ship purser, so he offered to pay for the drinks out of the change he had been given before.

The manager didn't like that, of course, so the purser came up with another hundred, and was given change from that. "Change," the two hundreds, and fresh money was passed back and forth, and it got too confusing for me to follow, but we had to finish our drinks and were chased out.

The purser gave me a fat tip, and explained what had happened. He got the men's shore money from Barclays, and had confidence it was legitimate currency. The manager had tried to dump somebody else's bad $100 on him. Somehow, we had gotten out with the drinks, the change from the drinks twice, and the good hundred.

I've learned when dealing with large currency to retreat to a safe, private place, and count everything out carefully.

Most cash I've ever seen: the Fenway Park safe, about $3.5M, about a 6x6x6 cube.

Kentish, you're the one missing the point. The subtraction wasn't her problem. She wasn't even totally sure a subtraction was the solution to the problem you were presenting her. You had all the details and the entire procedure all mapped out in your head before you got your 26 cents out. She gets a split tender out of the blue, has 26 cents in her hand that she doesn't know what she is supposed to do with, and you're asking for 11 cents. She was confused. I don't blame her. It's not that she couldn't subtract 11 from 26. She wasn't sure that was what she was supposed to do.

Just yesterday I had to create a spreadsheet to calculate taxes (planning for next year) and I had to deal with a capital gain situation where ordinary income was below the level where the cap gain tax was zero, but when the cap gain was added in, the total was above the cutoff, and part of the cap gain would be taxed at 15%. I've done this sort of thing, a lot. It took me three tries and about fifteen minutes to get the equation right. The third try was the simplest equation. I had been overly complicating it because I was not completely sure how capital gains were actually taxed. The IRS worksheet is pretty opaque. Now I know how it is done. Maybe.

I think that's a good point. It's not about being smart or math literate, it's about being asked something out of the ordinary and trying to compute what is being asked of you -- not the math problem itself.

The "complicated" part was all over and done. She had taken care of the charge, to me signifying that she understood the request, and was left with one amazing problem of mathematics: how to deduct eleven from 26. And for that she needed a calculator? For that you have to be a "numbers" person?

You know how some people are dyslexic? It can happen with numbers too. To you it may be head scratching and worrying, to the person it's an actual struggle that is not their fault, but is just how their brain is wired.

Ignoring the confusion of your request, even if this lady could not do the math without using a calculator, what's your point? Some of us just aren't numbers people! I am awful at simple math even like this and would have used a calculator too. I consider myself a smart person in many things. We all have our stuff, you know?

There's a difference between being able to do it, and having the
confidence that you can it 100% correctly. With a calculator
sitting right there, why not use it if you're not a "numbers
person?"

Similar experience: I have a coupon for dollar off a fast food
item good for TWO discounts. With the dollar off it comes to
$1.49 each for a total of $2.98 plus tax. I get to the window
and they tell me the final price is $4.43, Clearly they only
took one discount off. I tell them it's wrong and they
immediately tell me it's correct. I go through the math with
them pointing out that for that total the tax would have to be
$1.45--an outrageous amount. They stare at me and say they've
already given it to me and turn their hands up in a "whatever"
gesture. Finally the manager comes over and surveys the
situation and gives me a dollar back since the coupon was for a
dollar off. She "promises" me that this is now correct. I
point out that it's not correct since she's kept the tax I've
payed on that dollar. I tell her to keep the 11 cents tax as a
tip as I accept my dollar, smile and drive off.

At least the person waiting on you actually did the math correctly.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/21/2018 02:52PM by baura.

I totally feel you. I told the vet to shave three whiskers off my cat, split one lengthwise and the other two into thirds, wrap the lengthwise half around her pinky and burn two of the thirds and give me the balance and she was like, “Wut?”