Last week we went to our favorite pizza joint. They have awesome wood-fired pizza and we go there usually every week. The total for pizza and a couple cans of diet drinks was $19.35. The wife hands the girl a twenty, two dimes, and three nickels.
The cashier is a nice young girl, probably 18 or 19, definitely old enough to be out of school. She looks at my wife. She looks at her hand. She looks at my wife again. The cashier lays down the $20, then stares at the coins. She turns them over and stares some more. She looks up at my wife helplessly.
“That is thirty five cents,” says the wife.
The girl gives a little half smile. “Thanks, I have problems with coins,” she says. She drops the coins in the drawer, and stares at the twenty.
“I get a dollar back,” the wife helps move the transaction along. The girl says a polite thank you.
The wife and I wander to our table completely baffled at a person who cannot count change.
The girl hands the pizza ticket to the baker, completely baffled by old people who refuse to use a debit card.
5 comments:
Ask her to give you two tens for a five.
Hubby's sister could not comprehend coins. It took many Saturdays to get her to understand. Laying out 10 pennies and a 2 nickles or a dime plus all the rest. I was so surprised to later learn that she owned a bridal store. Must have gotten over her fear of money.
Kids haven't been able to count change back without the cash register doing it for them in years. This is a new dodge, though, that she couldn't even count up how much change your wife put in her hand.
When I worked at the hobby shop back in the 80s, we had one of those newfangled computerized cash registers because the ancient NCR mechanical register had finally given up the ghost. But the hobby shop owner INSISTED that all change had to be counted back the old fashioned way. (Where you count up to the amount the customer handed you.) So at least until that operation shut down I knew of at least one retailer whose employees could still count change.
(I should note, there were five shops in this operation and the only one that had a "modern" (by 1980's standards) cash register was the one I worked in. Made it fun when you had to go take a shift at one of the other stores -- but the only reason you could do that was because you DID know how to count back change.)
We, as a civilization are doomed.
You should have asked her to write your bill in cursive and read a clock with hands on it too. ;-)
I did a similar thing as your wife did. However, I got the change back. I was given 65 cents plus the 35 cents. I was puzzled and had her redo, giving me a dollar. She thought it was a scam and called for a manager. She just knew I was wrong.
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