How bad is the economy, really?

[xela]

I'm having my car detailed & decided to spend some of the wait at a nearby Dunkin. My bill came to $5.13. I have the cashier a $20; she rang me up & started to make change. Meanwhile I found a $1. "Oh - here. I have a $1. Looking at the display on her side of the register - which doubtless read "$14.87" - and holding my $1 in her hand, she was completely baffled. I remained silent. She called her manager over & was unable to even tell him the problem correctly (somehow, apparently, conveying that I had given her $16 for my $5.13 tab). At this point I found my voice. "I gave her $21. My change should be $15.87."

The manager looked at the till, at the money in her hands, and at the display, and confirmed what I'd just said. I got my change - dropped the coins in the top jar (force of habit) - and went to my table without muttering or shaking my head.

How bad can the economy really be, if someone who cannot, when looking at a display that says the customer is due $14.87, figure out that if the customer now hands her an additional $1, she now owes him 15.87, has a job?

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Comments

[rax.livejournal.com]

Do you want a serious answer to this question?

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

It has become clear to me, from my friends' responses, that I was giving voice here to my inner grumpy Republican. Whom generally try to keep a leash (and muzzle!) on.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Do be careful with that strategy --- leashing and muzzling your inner Republican can lead to them being blackmailed and forced to retire from office early.

[cfox.livejournal.com]

I don't think asking a user of a modern POS system to do that late in the transaction is a good idea. If I'm going to dig for change (and the store is quiet enough to allow it) I say "hold on while I get the pennies" (or whatever) without first handing over the larger bill.

There's a bunch of scammer strategies that involve sowing confusion and overloading the cashier's operation stack, and shutting down the transaction and summoning a witness is 100% correct if the customer has become over-involved.

[dcltdw]

I'd say "what rax said", but I think I can be succinct.

I *want* the economy to support people who have this kind of problem, because it means their job might be slightly challenging to them, and that's what I'd wish for anyone's job.

The real answer is: dude, population/employment ratio.

[dcltdw]

Aha, here we go. Recently saw this site recommended.

http://www.offthechartsblog.org/todays-jobs-report-in-pictures-28/

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Her failure at mental arithmetic might show that she's not very good at maths, with or without a diagnosed learning difficulty. It might show that her education wasn't very good. It might show that she was tired or unwell. All those hypotheses are obvious to you, no doubt, but I don't understand why you linked her arithmetical failure to the state of the economy. Explain?

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

My view (or that of my inner grumpy Republican, anyway) is that they must really be scraping the bottom of the barrel to be hiring people who cannot cope with adding one dollar to an amount. When I was a kid, cashiers routinely counted change: I'd hand them a $20 for my $5.13 bill, they'd open the till and do a little patter: "Five thirteen." Grab two pennies. "Fifteen." Grab a dime. "Twenty-five." Grab three quarters. "Six dollars." Grab four $1s. "Ten." Grab a $10. "Twenty." Hand customer the change. All faster, up until I was about five, than I could do it in my head. (I don't know when the UK switched to decimal money, but perhaps you are old enough to remember when cashiers in the UK would do the same thing --- but with pence and shillings to keep it interesting.) I have no reason to believe that the cashiers of my childhood were not perfectly ordinary people with perfectly orinary abilities.

[siderea]

1) What would you prefer that cashier do to feed her children?

2) In a capitalist market, there is a competitive niche in never hiring front line staff who can recognize a problem with their paychecks, or if they do, never figure out what to do about it. Why do you suppose that business would indulge your momentary convenience by hiring a more mathematically able clerk?

[ravenofdreams.livejournal.com]

I don't know that there's any comment on the state of the economy in it, really - I've been boggling cashiers with things like this since the boom days of the Clinton years. I think it's more the growing number of people who seem to think "DO NOT QUESTION OUR COMPUTER OVERLORDS" is a good life policy. People get so flustered when they have to do a thing that is not what the Computer is telling them that they just can't.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

Your theory is actually scarier than mine: that we have produced a generation wholly lacking in the ordinary problem-solving skills that make us human.

[nuclearpolymer.livejournal.com]

People get used to whatever job aids they have. It's like complaining about how we all have bad handwriting now because we type so much. The pace and demands of most jobs will require the people in those jobs to use as many job aids as they can. Cashiers used to know the price of everything in a grocery store. After bar codes, the stores started changing prices much more frequently, and there are also a lot more different products. Now-a-days, no cashier could possibly remember all the prices of all things in the store. Back in the old days, educated people could recite large amounts of poetry from memory, too...but it's not a skill emphasized or rewarded much these days.

[narya.livejournal.com]

If you look at pure economic theory, you'd expect companies to hire the most capable people they can given the wage they're willing to pay (assuming for the moment that wages are a fixed variable). In reality, however, the company will be screwed if they hire a bunch of people who are capable enough that they'll ditch you the instant the economy picks up and they can do better.