The Ogwife volunteers
at our church for any number of things, and sometimes the help she gets, while ambitious, is not… adequate.
Today she had a co-volunteer who was still attending college in her thirties become flummoxed at being faced with the task of making change for $25 out of $40.
Oy.
Long before there were pocket calculators I was taught at school and by my mother the bookkeeper how to check my work by casting out nines. Anyone who hasn’t ever done this, it seems like magic. And it is not foolproof but a bookkeeper who is entering data into a general ledger (How all business was conducted until the 70’s, pretty much, and even after that, for a lot of companies) it was a quick and dirty way to check your work. Remember that in those days only the head bookkeepers and accountants would have been supplied with adding machines, when the salary of a secretary was $20-$30 a week, an adding machine cost $300.
I get that you don’t need to do this because the machines are so much better and faster, that’s a very good thing. But shouldn’t anyone be able to make change for $25 out of $40?
10 comments Og | Uncategorized
Yep. It is something I try to drill into my kids. It can’t hurt.
But I do think those who cannot handle 40 – 25 = 15 become managers.
One would think… sigh
I have to teach 9/10 employees how to make change. Most cannot do so without a calculator
Even in the 1980’s, counting change back to a customer was dying out because of the advent of electronic cash registers.
In the early ’80s I worked for a local hobby shop chain that still had its old NCR cash registers in the stores. One of them finally broke beyond repair and was replaced with an electronic (a Sharp if I recall correctly).
And the employees were told that it didn’t matter that the machine displayed the correct change amount — they were still to count the change back the old-fashioned way, because that’s what our customers had come to expect. There was some grumbling, but it sure helped keep the drawer balanced when you had to count it out bill by bill and coin by coin.
I suspect that the day is coming (if it hasn’t already) that these new-fangled POS units will not just say how much change needs to go back, but will display a picture of the exact number of coins and bills that need to be pulled out of the register…you know, for cashiers who can’t count or read.
“you know, for cashiers who can’t count or read. ”
Or speak english.
It amazes me how some manage to go through life without being able to do the simple things. First day of the first math class in college, they handed a test out first thing. It was simple addition and subtraction. I thought it was a joke. It wasn’t. We lost a few people, they walked out. Second test was basic multiplication and division, we lost a whole bunch of the class, they couldn’t do it without a calculator. Second class, we started learning, sort of. I knew all the math, just needed the credit for the course as it was required for my degree. Instructor did the simple tests to thin the class out of those who needed the remedial courses. Still can’t fathom going through life not being able to do simple arithmetic. Not trig or calculus, just simple arithmetic. Some of the people appeared in their late forties. How do you go that far through life without being able to add or subtract?
Huh. I never heard of that technique until now. Kinda cool.
Mathematics didn’t bother me at all until I ran into differential equations. At that point, I switched from engineering to geology.
I really shouldn’t read blogs when I’ve been up since 5 ish and ended my day with a 4 hour commute on I65.
I read that as “casting out mimes” and had all sorts of visions in my head of ancient rituals involving a circle of salt and French people.
I think it’s time to head to sleep.
lol.
Shhh. That’s our little secret. Mime tossing is a sick, sick thing that nobody should ever do. Because a mime is a terrible thing to waste.
When, in my early 30s, I decided to use my G.I. Bill, I delivered pizza. I had kids at the front counter, with the register before them, turn and ask me what the change for X bill & Y cash tendered should be.
I usually told ’em a variation of I was getting ripped off, that the education I’d been paying for for 15 years had failed them. They never asked more than once.
I looked at the box & knew I could make change for whatever the customer gave me. When did this become an arcane science?