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.
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.
You guys are evil.
If I can find the reciept, I’m going to do this! Heh heh heh…
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.”
blushes
Ohhhhh! Thanks, 5-4-Fighting
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.
As opposed to a lesson in spelling! :smack:
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.
You’re quite welcome. That level of dumb is hard to discern for the able-brained.
GASP :eek:
Luanne Platter is real!
I must be getting old. I came back through this thread and read this post three times before the light went on.
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!
Shit.
See, it works! 
(and, I can’t believe you added those up!)
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.
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.
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.
Please tell me you’re kidding.
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.