It doesn't add up.
Jun. 12th, 2006 01:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plonqA few years back Mattel released a talking Barbie doll that included the phrase math is hard in its repertoire. The doll caused quite a stir at the time, primarily from groups who felt that it encouraged stereotypes. It turns out that the doll was disturbingly prophetic, at least based on what I read in the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
customers_suck community a couple of weeks back.
The scenario painted by the poster was that their cash register had malfunctioned, and refused to display the change owed back to customers. Her co-worker had resorted to struggling with a pocket calculator to figure out the change owed back, and was having to endure snide comments from the customers like, "did you drop out of school or something?" She defended her co-worker, of course, citing that neither of them are "good at math". The first few responses were commiserative in tone, expressing sympathy over having to deal with these rude customers, but eventually somebody posed the question that I had been thinking:
"What math is involved in giving back change? It's pure counting. Obviously you weren't trained properly for your job."
That opened the floodgates of indignation in the community, with some taking the side of that poster, but the majority siding with the poor beleaguered cashiers who saw counting change as being on par with integral calculus in terms of complexity. I was initially going to get involved, but there was not much for me to say that hadn't already been covered. If you can count out change when the computer tells you to give a person $6.37 then you can count change when the bill comes out to $11.13 and the person hands you a $20. Somebody explained it very simply, and it was dismissed as too complex.
Here is a simple explanation. Item comes out to $11.13, customer hands you a $20 bill. A modern till will tell you to give him back $8.87 (I did that in my head as I was typing this - maybe I'm in the wrong line of work). You don't need to know that, though. All you have to do is start at the customer's total and begin counting up to the amount that he/she gave you, starting with the smallest increment. Count it out loud so that the customer can follow what you are doing.
$11.13 (grab a penny)
$11.14 (grab a penny)
$11.15 (grab a dime)
$11.25 (grab a quarter)
$11.50 (grab a quarter)
$11.75 (grab a quarter)
$12.00 (grab a $1)
$13.00 (grab a $1)
$14.00 (grab a $1)
$15.00 (grab a $5)
$20.00
Yes, this is math...
... at a grade 2 level. That we apparently have high school graduates who can't wrap their heads around this makes me weep for the state of our education.
customers_suck community a couple of weeks back.The scenario painted by the poster was that their cash register had malfunctioned, and refused to display the change owed back to customers. Her co-worker had resorted to struggling with a pocket calculator to figure out the change owed back, and was having to endure snide comments from the customers like, "did you drop out of school or something?" She defended her co-worker, of course, citing that neither of them are "good at math". The first few responses were commiserative in tone, expressing sympathy over having to deal with these rude customers, but eventually somebody posed the question that I had been thinking:
"What math is involved in giving back change? It's pure counting. Obviously you weren't trained properly for your job."
That opened the floodgates of indignation in the community, with some taking the side of that poster, but the majority siding with the poor beleaguered cashiers who saw counting change as being on par with integral calculus in terms of complexity. I was initially going to get involved, but there was not much for me to say that hadn't already been covered. If you can count out change when the computer tells you to give a person $6.37 then you can count change when the bill comes out to $11.13 and the person hands you a $20. Somebody explained it very simply, and it was dismissed as too complex.
Here is a simple explanation. Item comes out to $11.13, customer hands you a $20 bill. A modern till will tell you to give him back $8.87 (I did that in my head as I was typing this - maybe I'm in the wrong line of work). You don't need to know that, though. All you have to do is start at the customer's total and begin counting up to the amount that he/she gave you, starting with the smallest increment. Count it out loud so that the customer can follow what you are doing.
$11.13 (grab a penny)
$11.14 (grab a penny)
$11.15 (grab a dime)
$11.25 (grab a quarter)
$11.50 (grab a quarter)
$11.75 (grab a quarter)
$12.00 (grab a $1)
$13.00 (grab a $1)
$14.00 (grab a $1)
$15.00 (grab a $5)
$20.00
Yes, this is math...
... at a grade 2 level. That we apparently have high school graduates who can't wrap their heads around this makes me weep for the state of our education.
