Math is hard

Recently (as in the last six months or so) I’ve fallen into a bit of a lunch rut where I alternate between Wendy’s, Taco Bell, and Quizno’s pretty regularly. Today it was time to make a run for the border where I ordered two crunchy beef taco’s, fresco style so its okay, and a small drink. My total was $3.03. Now all I had on me was a $10 bill and some lose change leftover from my daily Starbucks binge. What would you do? I didn’t want to spend the rest of my day at work jingling like some elementary school girl around Christmas with bells tied to her shoe laces, so I gave the kid $10.10.

Now usually I’m a big believer in not adding any additional complexity to fast food workers. I’ve been there so I know how it is. You’ve got a lot of hot appliances and people in a hurry yelling at you through a speaker unaware that it actually amplifies the sound. The last thing on your mind in that situation is algebra. But this particular cashier looked up to the tasks and my confidence in him was reinforced when, after handing him the usually mysterious extra money he didn’t even flinch. Even though he’d already keyed in $10 and opened the register, which is obviously past the point of no return. At this point the machine brain cannot help you - you are on your own.

My confidence in the young lad quickly evaporated as he proceeded to hand me $6 in cash and began digging around in the change till - Houston we have a problem. Still holding out hope I observed in silence as the cashier counted out my change, all $1.07 worth of it. After handing over the four quarters I could see the light go off, he titled his head and looked at the change in my hand, then at me, and then starred back to the change in my hand. Concerned that his head might explode I tried to reassure him with an “its okay” at which point he gave me the nickel and two pennies. I took my $1.07 in coins and said thank you.

It’s amazing how in pressure situations some of us lose our most basic skills. I was working as a cashier in a grocery when the power went out. It was on a Saturday afternoon and the store let in a lot of light so our manager decided to keep the store open. Of course the registers and electronic scales were inoperable so the manager opened my till and produced, from somewhere, a small scale. We apparently didn’t have calculators, oh scales we had a good supply of, but calculators apparently weren’t necessary. So I spent the rest of my shift trying to calculate how much 2.75 pounds of broccoli cost at $0.79/pound. I’ll just say it wasn’t pretty. If you had the good fortune of being in my line that day you could’ve pretty much named your price.