o/t at the sale

The auctioneer started selling furniture,so,,it was a good time to go get a hotdog and a coffee. The line was a mile long. It didnt really bother me, I Had some great conversations with the people in front and behind me. There was a high school aged girl taking orders.I ordered two hot dogs and a small coffee.Hot dogs were 1,50 each,,small coffee 75 cents. I got the 3.75 out of my pocket.She writes my order down. She then gets the calculator,,adds up the total,,3.75.Then she comes back to me,,says 3.75 please.I give it to her,she puts it in the cash box.Then she looks at the order she wrote and goes to get the stuff.Im not real smart,but it amazes me that young people cant add 1.50 plus 1.50 plus 75 without using a calculator? The girl was not slow,I would never make fun of someone.She ran the buttons on the calculator at lightning speed..lol...I see this a lot of times with young people many places that I go. Its not good in my eyes,,,too much modern stuff,,young people need to learn basics too. Ok,,thats my 02. cents for today!

Sometimes I use the calculator on simple math. Usually when it's someone else's money. I don't always trust my math to easy to forget to carry a number.

Larry,

I "retired" from a long-standing job in 2000, and then went to work in the floor covering department at Home Depot. It was amazing to me how few people could do simple mathematics in their heads. It's not rocket science to calculate the area of carpet that I was selling, but almost none of my customers could figure out how much carpet they wanted to buy without a calculator. On a few occasions, I would say to the customer, "Come on. You're a smart guy. How much carpet should I take off this roll to equal XXX yards." Those guys would usually respond with the right answer, it's just that our society has grown so dependent on calculators, people naturally go the machine first.

Tom in TN

People look at me like I'm nuts at market for doing it in my head when they buy 10 things at different prices. Or worse take care of two or more people at the same time and keep it straight. If someone pulls out a calculator they sometimes take longer and get a different answer. I re-explain the prices(that was that plus that is xxw...those are...making xxx... with that it makes xxz the total....) as they type it in again then they come up with the same thing. If I can't think it over, out come the pen and paper.

You were standing in line with plenty of time to know what you wanted and figure the total,she just heard the order from you for the first time,probably isn't familar with the prices
and also has to remember what you ordered so she had a lot more to do than you did.Plus whoever she is working for may have instructed her to run all orders on the calculator to
avoid any mistakes.I'd much rather she concentrate on getting the order straight than the money total.

She obviously was familiar with the prices in order to put them in the calculator. TDF

Where I work we have everything on the computer now. Two cash drawers up front with the cash register being part of the network. Until May of 2010 we did everything with paper and pen. EVERYTHING! Almost overnight we went to everything paperless except for receipts, etc.

So now we have the option of figuring the change in the head or letting the machine do it. When a good percentage of the customers are used to seeing the machines figure the change it's simply easier to let it do what it is designed to do. We have one employee who insists on counting back change and not entering the amount tendered. He makes more mistakes and has to "fix" them more in front of irritated customers.

I get the point of the thread here. We have been dumbed down to the point we can't function without the electronic aids. It's funny, I was watching the bookkeeper check up the sales for the day and she kinda winced at something. I asked what the deal was and she shows me how our system is capable of keeping track of individual coins in the til down to the penny. She can tell you who, and almost when, someone wanted a quarter for two dimes and a nickel. She can also tell us when the mistake was made where the count isn't correct (IF we enter the correct numbers and so forth).

Computers can be a pain, but used right they can and are a timesaver.

well didnt we use to sell carpet by the yard? now only by the foot.

Give the kid a break!

You don't know what instructions she may have had to prevent errors or conflicts. Also, sometimes I figure something in my head and then run it through a calculator simply to see it in black and white.

And I can remember accounting classes in college when we laid everything out on a tan ledger sheet with a pencil and getting caught using a pocket calculator resulted in an automatic "F".

I can't understand why some of you are covering for this person.3 figure math in your head can be hard .Come on.

I was road tripping one day and stopped for a drink.Small town convenience store. Guy came out as I was going in.Mumbled something and I says excuse me. Shook his head and said you'll see. Girl behind the counter looked liked early 20s. I got a bottle of water and went back to the counter. Girl says I can't sell anything cause the light thingy is broke so I don't know how much change you get. I put $3.00s on the counter for a $1.25 bottle of water and said that should cover it. She looked at the money and said okay I hope your right.

At a sale the local 4H had the lunch stand. Gave the girl a $5.00 bill for a $3.50 order. Screamed out this is so hard to figure out.A mom that was helping got my change and apologized for her .I just said be sorry at your school system not me.

This is our future whether you like it or not.

MY wife carries a calculator in her purse and we have one in each vehicle. However, we rarely use them. We've gone back to just doing the math in our heads; it isn't that difficult to do. When we get to the checkout, we already know what it is going to cost us. If that number doesn't come up, we know the clerk ran it up wrong. They get a funny look on their face when we tell them what the total should be - then they add up the prices again and see that we are right. Some have argued that the machine is right as they don't have a clue!

Let's see. Order was taken and delivered correctly. Worker was putting good
effort in doing task at hand. Change was given and was also correct. Worker still
wasn't good enough. The true problem in this scenario is called the customer.
Fortunately it's a self correcting problem,they end up on the other side of the grass.
Sometimes you have to wait patiently for this fix.

I know of several places where the owners want employees to use a calculator to add 1 and 1.
It does not matter that you can do it in your head. EVERY figure goes threw the calculator.

I'd much rather she concentrate on getting the order straight than the money total.

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Looks like she got them both right :wink:

I am glad to she she was working .

Larry LOOKS LIKE the girl did her job, just different. Some places have a button on the cash register/computer hit it ie large coffee it ads $1.50 plus any tax sometimes in that environment the worker does not have a clue as to the item price. Throw in all the veriables (extra onion, cheese) and so on and it changes .20 cents all the time!! Now for my classic at a fair. The order came to $2.50 cents we gave the girl a $2 bill and a 50 cent piece. She got the manager as she had seen neither!!!!

Larry Two points of views on this post.

1) The girl used a calculator for a simple math problem. Well many schools are letting/making the kids use calculators at young ages so very little "math" basics are learned anymore. My youngest grand kids are NOT taught division at school. They are give a calculator to divide anything. Long division with the decimal point has not been taught for over ten years. So the young girl is part of a generation that has been schooled to use machines for a very simple task from a young age.

2) The young girl is working, which is getting rare. She got your you order correctly and in a timely manner. She even double checked the order that she wrote down. I would hire her in a minute. Many are too smart to work and defiantly not going to check their work to make it right.

P.S. My Father was a walking calculator. He could do multiplication of up to five digit number faster than you could run them through a calculator. He did spend some time with my sons. About two years ago they where working on a welding project in the shop and they needed to figure the hypotenuse of a triangle to make a truss/brace. My Father was there and rattled off his answer. They used that and built the rest of the truss. Later when we went to install i9t we found out he was "off" by more than an inch. It took us another two hours to rebuild the truss. I told them to not trust their own mental math and NEVER trust my Father's anymore, on things that had to be exact. They make fun of me using my flip phone as a calculator all of the time. I do estimates in my head but double check them with a calculator. I can do all the require math with pen and paper but usually do not have them handy.

On the way home from my land yesterday I stopped at the drive through at Burger King.
The girl at the window said that'll be $5.65.
I gave her a 5 and a 1.
She gave be back a quarter and a nickel.
I showed her my change and told her she owed me another nickel.
She blinked a couple of times then did something inside I assume added it up on a calculator.
Then gave me a frown and the nickel.
I didn't say anything but I wished for her sake she had got it right.

This sort of sounds like a part time job, not something that's done everyday. Once or twice a year I have to sell tickets and it takes me a little while to get in gear. I don't like to get it wrong so if it's a big sale I'll uses a calculator.

I did the "old school" math and I still am not great at adding up figures in my head. Some people can, come people can't. I don't hold it against anyone.

Like others said, at least she was working!

K

It's just a matter of exposure. I'll bet if she did it all day every day,she learn to take the "shortcut" and do it in her head.
Back when the refrigerator factory was going,they had one plant that built refrigerators and one that built air conditioners. One of the neighborhood kids went to work in the AC plant and they put him right on quality control. He had to look at the wiring and make sure the switches were wired properly. He said it was miserable doing that eight hours a day for the first few weeks. He'd have a sheet of paper in one hand and have to look down in there to see if it was wired right,constantly having to look back and forth from the paper to the switch. He said after a while,it just became second nature. He could just look in and know at a glance if it was right.

Same thing happens with me on Board Of Review. We hear appeals for two days,once a year. The first few appeals,I'm rusty as all get out and it takes me some time to get in the swing of things.

Yes she was, and perhaps she was doing it exactly like she was told to do it. gm

How do you know she wasn't looking at a price list?

Thanks all,just got home and read the replies,,I do agree,she was working and did her job,I didnt get mad at her, I was happy to get my lunch,,,and it was good!Lots of good points were made,,thanks for all the replies.

(quoted from post at 14:16:32 05/08/16) How do you know she wasn't looking at a price list?

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Don't matter.
She got it right.
That matters.

Back in our day she would have been using a cash register instead of a calculator.