What ever happened to the proper way of making change, i.e. counting upwards from the total cost, from smaller coins to larger, until you get to the amount tendered?
E.g. total is $16.12, customer hands over a 20:
count up pennies, 16.13, 16.14, 16.15
then a dime, 16.25
then quarters, 16.50, 16.75, 17.00,
and finally dollar bills, 18.00, 19.00, 20.00
No maths necessary,apart from the ability to count, of course… ah, I’ve discovered why it’s died out… 
Some questions just answer themselves, eh Colophon? 
I’ve lost enough money trying to get even change from people who can’t subtract that I don’t even bother anymore.
Total is $11.23, I hand over a twenty and 2 singles.
I get back 77 cents.
“Sorry, the ten?”
“The what?”
“I gave you a twenty.”
“No you didn’t, you gave me a twelve dollars. You get 0.77 back.” Register is already closed, and of course the machine says 0.77 so that must be it.
“Uh… I gave you a twenty and two ones; I think you entered it wrong.”
“Obviously you wouldn’t have done that. The total was $11.23 - why would you need two dollars more — a twenty would have been too much.”
At this point there’s a line waiting, and I don’t feel like raising a ruckus, so I just left $10 poorer.
This (though not the same conversation) has happened at least twice to me.
When I do this I make sure that I tell them as I hand it over – e.g. if the total is £10.76 I’ll hand over a £20 note and a £1 coin and say something like: “I don’t want a load of change – here’s £21 so you can give me a tenner.”
It usually works, with only the occasional blank look. Where possible I also try to head for the checkout manned by a “hopefully reasonably numerate middle-aged woman earning a bit of extra money in a daytime job”, rather than an “I left school at 16 and only learnt about mental arithmetic in history class” teenager. 
That method of teaching change making hasn’t been around since cash registers went digital. I know because I had to teach somebody how to do it back in…oh…1986. Seriously, I wish they WOULD go back to teaching it this way but that would just make sense. :rolleyes:
Nobody is ever taught how to make change anymore. I’m 27 and I really, really have to think about it - because I’ve never had to do it! You tell the register what they gave you and you give them what it says to give them. When the register goes down it all goes to hell. A place, by the way, where there are special rooms reserved for those of you who give the cashier three pennies, a dime and a half, and a franc so that you can get back a nickel and a Kennedy half dollar from 1973. Seriously - it’s not a skill you often need and nobody teaches you anymore, if you want an honest answer. You can think I’m a dim bulb if you like.
I learnt it from my mother, at the age of about eight, when I was “helping” her run a charity stall. She’d be counting out change at (it seemed) lightning speed, with the mystical numbers “Two-pound-sixtyeight-sixtynine-seventy-eighty-three-pound-four-five-and-five’s-a-tenner-thank-you!” while the woman at the next stall was still fumbling around with a solar-powered calculator in a gloomy hall… I was impressed, anyway.
Edit: I should point out that I’m only 30 now, so we’re not talking the dark ages here!
Well, there’s your problem - I can’t count in metric.
Another aspect that bugs me. I’ve always been taught to keep all bills face up and oriented in the same direction, it cuts down on errors. Now they give you bills in every different direction, face up, face down, turned from one to the next. Then of course they pile the coins on top of the bills and top it off w/ the receipt. If they’d put the receipt in the bag, then the coins in my hand, topped by the bills, I could slip the bills into my wallet while palming the coins, then put the coins in my pocket and I’m out of there. The way they do it now, I’ve either got to lay everything down to sort it out, or clutch it in my hand until I get to my car and do it there.
Are you the nice woman who bought a bag of chips and a soda from me when I was 12, and when I fumbled trying to ‘count back’ the change (adding up to the change amount instead of the original), patiently taught me how to do it right?
If so, then thanks.
Colophon, in that particular case, it was a man in his 60s, who somehow missed out on the lesson even when they used to teach it.
On a similar note (though taking a jab at certain religious nuts at the same time, hah!), I encountered a truly brilliant bit of Stoopid about a week ago.
I was at Safeway – not the usual one I go to, but one in a different part of town. Where, apparently, the only staff they can get are gum-popping peroxide blondes who read the Bible on their smoke breaks (the gum and hair color are accurate, I’m extrapolating about the Bible).
By some freak of luck, what I’m buying comes out – with tax! – to $6.66. I notice it and grin – hey, that’s kinda nifty. The cashier notices it – and voids the transaction so quickly I didn’t even realize she was moving.
“You’ll have to buy something else!” she gasps.
Uh, no? “Are you kidding me?” I ask her.
“But… but… you can’t! That’s the Devils number!”
Right-o. At this point I’ve got five people in line behind me. “Tell your manager to meet me at the information desk, okay?” is what I tell her. I grab my bags and head over there, where the Stoopid is not quite so prevalent. She’s so flustered it takes her three tries to ring up the next transaction properly (I watched).
The manager, as it happens, was MORE THAN HAPPY to take my “Devil money”, and promised to have a chat with Ms. Religion.
Gah.
My late mother was once given £10 to much change. She said to the doofus “Excuse me but you’ve made a mistake here”
Doofus points imperiously to sign on wall “Check your change as mistakes cannot be rectified afterwards”.
“OK” says mum and strolls out…grinning.
How 'bout a story from the other side?
'Used to work in a music store in the ‘deep’ south. I answered the phone one day and was asked “Do ya’ll have guitar lessons?” by a deadpan, serious southern drawl.
I answered “Yes, we do”
“Oh, ya’ll do?”
I answered “Yes, we do”
“Ya’ll do?”
I answered (jokingly) “No, not really”
“Ya’ll don’t?”
I answered “Yes, we do. I was just joking”
Pause…
“Ya’ll do?”
You can guess where it went from there…
Had it happen a couple times where I was the dumb clerk. And I was taught how to count up!
I blame it on the guy who gave me extra money, while I was counting up. I totally spaced on the change because it threw me (you interrupt me in the middle to add extra and I’m lost). We got it straightened, but I felt embarassed afterwards. It was mostly irritating though, because he gives me money and I ring it up and am halfway through when he goes “Oh here’s a quarter”. Let me know you have it before I’ve started the process so I can wait for you to give it to me! I try to, but if they move too fast I just shrug and save the change for next time or to toss in my bowl.
Had a few irritated people behind him too, as this was the busiest place in the food court (little Greek place, awesome, I miss it).
Another story, there’s been a few times where I paid for something at a store and the till is down… they’re shocked when I tell them my change! As if it’s so magical that I can add cents in my head (I just do the change thing mentally).
I have been told that the drones in convenience stores and fast food outlets are told NOT to try to count out change; they are instructed to enter the amount given into the register and go from there. I know one store manager who gives clerks a written warning if they are caught not following this procedure. They are required to do this even if the customer gives them exact change. He said the problems with the drawers not balancing at the end of the day are not nearly as bad under this system. I don’t know if it is because the kids aren’t taught it in school or what.
I’d’ve just handed her a holy trinity of dollar bills and left. With God On My Side. 
Well I can see that they might be a little taken aback. Not because the maths is hard, but because the beauty of the “counting up” system is that you don’t even have to work out how much change you’re handing over. You just pick it up a coin/bill at a time until the running total is the same as what the customer handed you. It takes longer to do the subtraction sum and then count out that total.
My very-first-ever job was working the summer before college at a snoball stand run by my former grade school (a private school; the snoball stand was a fundraiser), where there were no cash registers – just cash boxes – and I learned to count up. However, I’ll admit that when I went on to work at a Hallmark store during college I was flustered the first time a customer gave me “too much” money.* But just that first time. So whenever I encounter a clerk who is struggling with change, I like to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s their first time.
*Oh, and how fun it would be whenever someone gave me too much money but it wasn’t the right amount for the change they were expecting! Customers can be dumbasses, too!
I haven’t worked retail in 14 years, but this made me cheer a little!
My dumb ass clerk story also happened in Georgia!
I was in a very rural section, trying new fishing spots. I stopped into a backwoods “Country Store” to grab a soda. They had a little food counter where there was an advertised “special”, some kind of ice cream cone. Sounds good, I’ll try it! I ask the large, slack-jawed teenager behind the counter for the “Special”. He asks me what it is(?). I point to the sign and say, “It’s listed right there, The “special”.” He got red in the face and bellowed, “I can’t read, okay???” Um, okay… I told him what to make and quickly left.
I once accidentally stole 20 bucks from a lady when the register went down and I was so flustered about it that I was trying to count up change the way I’d heard rumor one might do and I just, I dunno, missed a 20. I tracked her all through the mall, took me probably half an hour to find her (and lucky I did, I usually can’t remember what people look like at all - I think she must have had a baby in a stroller or an unusual purse or something that helped me find her.)