[QUOTE=Cervaise]
Had this happened to me, I would have gone out of my way to return to that store, purchase the exact same set of stuff, and wait in the same cashier’s line at every available opportunity.
[/QUOTE]
I’d make sure I was wearing every bit of pentacle jewelry I own first.
Sometimes, exploiting ignorance can be fun. 
Just going to toss this out there… Selling concessions at a local theatre, we do all the math mentally (much, much faster than a calculator or fancy change-machine, even for the numerically impaired among us) and the quickest way to slow me up is to hand me the extra quarter or whatever so that your change comes out even. It’s not as though I can’t do the math, it’s just that my brain is set in the groove of subtracting from the easy whole dollar amounts (5, 10, and 20, mostly) and switching that seems to require a full-system reboot on my subtracting functions.
OK, I was enjoying the thread right up to **Projammer’s ** post. I have to admit, I’m a sufferer of dyscalculia and absolutely hated working in retail when I was in high school and college. I have to wonder how many people out there saw a blank look on my face when they handed me odd lots of change, assuming that I’d see the wisdom of it. I did learn to trust the cash register, but sometimes the folks you guys are writing about also *buy * things – imagine one of us on each side of the cash register!
Oddly enough, I’ve always been good with fractions, so my woodworking hobby has never suffered – I can figure halves, quarters, eighths and sixteenths in my head. Maybe it’s just from looking at a tape measure so much.
[QUOTE=Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor]
You need the Chicago Reader’s permisssion, not mine. But I give my permission. Now get theirs.
[/QUOTE]
Eh, that’s way too much effort. Nevermind.
I’ve learned never to assume that giving the odd bit of change to produce a rounded-off amount of change these days. So if I do that, I always say, “Let me give you an extra 14¢ so you can give me a quarter back,” or whatever it is. That way I’m not acting like I’m assuming they’re incapable of doing the mental math, even though they all too often are.
[QUOTE=WhyNot]
I’d make sure I was wearing every bit of pentacle jewelry I own first.
Sometimes, exploiting ignorance can be fun.
[/QUOTE]
You guys are evil.
If I can find the reciept, I’m going to do this! Heh heh heh…
[QUOTE=Cervaise]
Had this happened to me, I would have gone out of my way to return to that store, purchase the exact same set of stuff, and wait in the same cashier’s line at every available opportunity.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=WhyNot]
I’d make sure I was wearing every bit of pentacle jewelry I own first.
Sometimes, exploiting ignorance can be fun.
[/QUOTE]
On the second day, I’ll show up wearing a Santa suit while you’re waiting at the register. You look at me and say “Dude, I think you mis-read the e-mail.”
“What? Ohhh! Sorry.”
[QUOTE=5-4-Fighting]
It’s about the fact that the clerk didn’t know there wasn’t a thirteen cent coin and actually thought one would be forthcoming.
I think.
[/QUOTE]
blushes
Ohhhhh! Thanks, 5-4-Fighting
[QUOTE=Otto]
Aw, poor pet, had to deal with it two whole times. Fortunately this round of construction is in the opposite direction of my daily commute and stops just shy of my exit, but I still get stuck in the backup of traffic on the way home every day. And whoever’s in charge of placing those barrels needs a good slapping.
[/QUOTE]
No, I meant couple in a generic sense meaning more than once.
Since April 9th I had to go out there and back 12 times. I don’t think the construction actually started until, what, 2 weeks ago? But they need a leason in lane management. We have construction season in Milwaukee county every year, but they set up the cones and barrels more logically.
[QUOTE=pkbites]
But they need a leason in lane management.
[/QUOTE]
As opposed to a lesson in spelling! :smack:
[QUOTE=Colophon]
Well, you oughta put numbers on the damn coins like other folks do.
[/QUOTE]
I must agree with you on this. It’s crazy that American coins don’t have numbers.
I’ve gone so far as to calculate the additional Provincial and Federal taxes in my head while standing in line and have the exact change all ready for the cashier.
Let see, all together that’s $28.37.
Yup. Here’s $28.37.
To the cashier, I look like a cross between Albert Einstein and Criss Angel.
[QUOTE=Nzinga, Seated]
blushes
Ohhhhh! Thanks, 5-4-Fighting
[/QUOTE]
You’re quite welcome. That level of dumb is hard to discern for the able-brained.
[QUOTE=Sofaspud]
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!”
[/QUOTE]
GASP :eek:
Luanne Platter is real!
[QUOTE=Chimera]
On the second day, I’ll show up wearing a Santa suit while you’re waiting at the register. You look at me and say “Dude, I think you mis-read the e-mail.”
[/QUOTE]
I must be getting old. I came back through this thread and read this post three times before the light went on.
[QUOTE=WhyNot]
This newer system makes it harder to keep track of how to remove the correct amount - you need to remember not only that you didn’t ring up $3.58 four times, but to take out 12 singles, 8 quarters, 4 nickles and 24 pennies. If you take out a ten, 4 singles, a quarter, a nickel and 2 pennies, you’re going to get caught because you’ll have too many singles and not enough 10s in your drawer at the end of your shift, even though your total balances out.
[/QUOTE]
Okay, but you should really be busted if you take out 12 singles, 8 quarters, 4 nickels, and 24 pennies – that adds up to $14.44, versus the $14.32 that’s the sum of either the first or third batch of coins and bills!
[QUOTE=Sternvogel]
Okay, but you should really be busted if you take out 12 singles, 8 quarters, 4 nickels, and 24 pennies – that adds up to $14.44, versus the $14.32 that’s the sum of either the first or third batch of coins and bills!
[/QUOTE]
Shit.
See, it works! 
(and, I can’t believe you added those up!)
[QUOTE=Colophon]
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
[/QUOTE]
I still do that in my store, but I only count denominations from $1.00 up. Nobody really seems to care about the pennies and nickels.
Even still, I do it mentally, even for the coins. It makes correct change a trivial process. All you have to be able to do is count.
[QUOTE=Colophon]
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.”
[/QUOTE]
I just tell the clerks out loud how much I’m giving them (“Here’s twenty-one”). That way, if they’re going to just punch the number into their register, at least they’ll do the right number. If I say something like, “Here’s $23.12, so my change will just be five and a quarter,” it’ll probably just confuse them.
[QUOTE=RedSwinglineOne]
FWIW, I was worked at Mcdonald in high school twenty or so years ago, and we spent at least 4 hours in the back being tought how to count up change without a register, including many combinations of extra coins. Our registers were digital, but we were expected to only use them to double check. If we were seen using the register to pick up the change rather than counting up, we were reprimanded.
[/QUOTE]
I worked at a McD’s in the 1970s. We were told that for any transaction with four items or fewer, we should add up the total in our heads while picking up the food, and just enter that total in the register (the register calculated the sales tax). After running a register for a few weeks, we knew the common combos by heart–no need to calculate what a Big Mac, a medium drink, and a regular fries cost. If you couldn’t do it, you didn’t work the register. Half the high school was waiting anxiously to take your place.
The manager said he didn’t want customers standing around waiting for you to punch all the numbers into the register.
Fast forward to 2006, when my daughter started managing a shift at McD’s. There wasn’t one single person on her entire crew capable of memorizing the prices of the food items, much less adding them mentally.
[QUOTE=Zsofia]
You don’t subtract when you make change, you count up. So, what you meant is that I don’t need counting very often.
[/QUOTE]
Please tell me you’re kidding.
[QUOTE=Zsofia]
And as for the poor foreign girl, haven’t you ever noticed that our quarters don’t say “25 cents”? They say “quarter dollar”!
[/QUOTE]
I would think that someone even considering visiting the U.S. (much less moving here and getting a job) would figure out that there are 100 cents in a dollar. Quarter dollar is every bit as precise and informative as 25 cents if you know that.
If you’re going to complain about the coinage, complain about the dime, which doesn’t say “ten cents” or “a tenth of a dollar” or “10” or “.1” or anything else even remotely useful to people not familiar with U.S. currency. It just says “one dime.”
And the nickel says “five cents,” but the print is small enough that it would be impossible to read in dim light or in a hurry.
The quarters, however? I have no problem with them.
I hate the fifty cent coins a local movie theater gives in their change. So I paid for a ticket in Susan Anthony dollars, wondering how the ticket clerk might be confounded. Sure enough, he looked at the coins, turned them over several times, then asked me “Is this American money?”
And as for driver licenses, a friend of mine moved to San Antonio, Texas when her husband was transferred there. Previous post was Fairbanks, Alaska. The DMV clerk wanted her to take all kinds of tests to get the Texas license, because “we don’t accept foreign driver licenses.” My friend had to get the supervisor, because she couldn’t make the stupid clerk believe Alaska is a US state.