It doesn't add up.

[plonq]

A 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 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.

Comments

[giza.livejournal.com]

When I first looked at those numbers, I thought you were talking about compound interest!

Of course, it seems that high school graduates can't understand THAT either, based on the number of people who are in credit card debt.

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

I have a science degree, but if I get snide comments from customers, I also have trouble counting change.

:(

Thankfully I don't have to do that any more :D

[furahi.livejournal.com]

That's the way everybody gives changes here; sometimes even when the till tells them how much to give.

In part it's to make the math easier, but it's also to give the client the feel that they're not being ripped off =P

[furahi.livejournal.com]

Well, y eah, under pressure 1+1 may equal 3 -__-

[pierrekrahn.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of that girl selling shirts at the NIN concert.
Remember how she kept "getting different numbers" when all she had to do was add up 4 numbers with a calculator?

[dingotush.livejournal.com]

I was always taught to give change that way, and customers expected you to call out what you were doing in a sing-song voice so they knew you were doing it right. Mind you it was slightly different as we have 2p, 20p and 50p, and no quarter (penny, two, five, ten, twenty, fifty, pound, pound, pound, fiver). It also helps you figure out what to do if you are short of some types of coin. You also find it easier pre-decimalisation (the subtract method would have been a bit of a pain).

Mind you, the cash registers I used had a convenient slot on the side where you could fit a hand crank if the power went out!

[marmelmm.livejournal.com]

Just remember my mantra:

"If they were bright, they wouldn't be working at Wal-Mart".

Doesn't surprise me one iota.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

1. I'm sure they weren't trained to do anything but give back the change that the register tells them. "Training" is not a big thing in employment nowdays.

2. If there was a line, and people being snarky at me, I'd have difficulty counting, too.

[vichan.livejournal.com]

All registers I've ever worked with have always told me the change. You get to depend on that, and you start counting, well... the opposite direction. You're adding instead of subtracting. Get into that 'robot' mode that's so easy to fall into when you've got customer after customer after customer, and suddenly you've gotta go the other way? Add in an irate customer, it'll be a brain melt.

(And this is why I don't do that anymore. I don't miss customer service one bit. Yay!)

[deffox]

Greetings,

Hope you don't mind I added you.

I find it hard that people can't count. But I encounter it at fast food places enough.

But maybe I find it hard to grasp because I work with trig at the job. There is also plenty of metric to english conversions.

Not that I don't make mistakes. Though for some reason my mistakes tend to be with the most significant digit.