basic skills anyone?

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rld9877

rld9877

wantsamopar
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This has probably happened to everyone at least once but it still bothers me every time.

I was at Bagelman this morning getting, surprise, a bagel. They are the best in the world in my opinion. My total came to $3.30 and i handed the lady $4 in singles. I then reached into my pocket to grab a nickel and as I handed it to her should just stared at me. She gave me several quizzical looks. She looks at the register, which says .70 for my change, then looks at the nickel, then looks at me. I couldn't take it and i told her that this so she can give me 75 cents back, or three quarters. "oh" she says and proceeds to do so.

Why is this an issue? If you work a retail job, handling money, shouldn't you know any better?
 
You see it in various forms occasionally. Stupidity is a choice, after all. My wife and I were shopping at a major grocery chain recently (Superstore) and she tried to hand some change to the clerk. The young snot-nosed brat looked at her and asked if it was all there; he did not count the change. My wife did not chew him out but this was horribly arrogant. Normally, a clerk would also count the change to ensure that it was correct. It was also no accident that this person came from a culture where women have no value and he was raised to look down upon them.

If I ever see this again, there will definitely be a scene...

rld9877 said:
This has probably happened to everyone at least once but it still bothers me every time.

I was at Bagelman this morning getting, surprise, a bagel. They are the best in the world in my opinion. My total came to $3.30 and i handed the lady $4 in singles. I then reached into my pocket to grab a nickel and as I handed it to her should just stared at me. She gave me several quizzical looks. She looks at the register, which says .70 for my change, then looks at the nickel, then looks at me. I couldn't take it and i told her that this so she can give me 75 cents back, or three quarters. "oh" she says and proceeds to do so.

Why is this an issue? If you work a retail job, handling money, shouldn't you know any better?
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I think you'd have had better luck if you'd handed the lady the nickel with the four singles.. but yeah, there is a definite lack of basic math skills in this country; especially since the advent of calculators, computerized cash registers, et cetera. I once got a gift certificate for $15 from my local video store. I cashed it in for 8 bucks on a day that the register happened to be on the blink- and had to tell the teenager behind the counter what 15 minus 8 equals. :angry7:

I am also horrified daily by the lack of spelling and grammar skills, but that's a different rant.
 
Slantsick said:
I think you'd have had better luck if you'd handed the lady the nickel with the four singles.
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Well i gave her the four singles, held up a finger in a "hold on a second" motion, then gave her the nickel.

And Slantsick, if you thing spelling and grammar is bad, where I live you need to speak Spanish to even get a job at a fast food joint. Seriously, they wont hire you unless you speak both Spanish and English. About one out of every ten customers I get at Staples doesn't speak English, and have no desire to learn either.
 
LOL, I say, "Nothing new there!"

rld9877 said:
About one out of every ten customers I get at Staples doesn't speak English, and have no desire to learn either.
Click to expand...

And that is the problem with it all. They will come to America and not give a rats butt about what's spoken. Anyone else coming into the country from anywhere else will actually take the time to learn.
 
I work the register at my Dads feed store. You don't have to count change any more. When some one hands you some money you just punch it in to the register and it tells you what to give them back in change. But I try and count the change I will give back before I punch it in to the register to stay up on "the old ways" LOL


It can go both ways though. As some customers cant count either. Like the one time a I was going to give a lady 6 bucks back and she handed me another buck. So I gave here 7 bucks. She looked at me like I was stuped and "said I gave you the buck so I should only get five back". LOL
 
Sometimes works out good.. picked up coffee for the boys at work at the Timmy's drive through. Came to 7 something. Gave the girl a 10, then scrounged the change to clear out the ashtray. She got so confused, I was trying to help her out by telling her I was rounding it up for her. Of course, after multiple attempts at trying to void the sale and redoing it she got flustered. Handed me back $15, and a bunch of change. I looked at her, figured what the hey and drove off. Not a clue.. Normally, I'd give it back right there and then, but they got it back over the next week, just provided me with some well-deserved FREE coffee lol..

Grant
 
It goes beyond change, too. I swear the grocery stores need to have remedial bag packing lessons.

Like, please, don't put my chicken in with my beef or pork. If there happens to be a tear in the packaging then we're talking cross contimination. Now we're talking health issues.

And for goodness sake, if I put my groceries on the conveyor in groups, such as the boxed foods all the together, the perishables all together, the canned all together, the frozen all together, bag 'em that way! Nothing ticks me off to get home and put away groceries, putting away the perishables first, to find yogurt mixed in with the dry goods when I go into the basement to put things on the pantry shelf.
 
rld9877 said:
if you thing spelling and grammar is bad
Click to expand...

Ummm...Do you mean, "if you think spelling and grammar are bad..."? :snakeman:

I own a retail store and give change back to customers all the time. The problem is that you get lazy. You punch in the amount tendered and the register automatically calculates the change. If I'm talking to the customer about something and they hand me extra change after I've already popped open the register, I admit I get confused sometimes. I chalk it up to being distracted.

Oh, by the way, I have an IQ of 148. :toothy10:
 
gofish said:
ummm...do you mean, "if you think spelling and grammar are bad..."? :snakeman:

I own a retail store and give change back to customers all the time. The problem is that you get lazy. You punch in the amount tendered and the register automatically calculates the change. If i'm talking to the customer about something and they hand me extra change after i've already popped open the register, i admit i get confused sometimes. I chalk it up to being distracted.

Oh, by the way, i have an iq of 148. :toothy10:
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lol
 
Well I work with special Ed kids and we call being able to make change a lifeskill, kinda like wiping your ***. To be blunt most kids lack number sense these days. Its just not taught, or they just are to lazy to figure it out.
 
WHAT ABOUT COMMON SENSE?

Yeah seems if the power goes out and the computerized register is down the business is out of business till it comes back on.

I had a part coming and the shipper put the wrong address on the paperwork.

UPS was to deliver the next day, so I call to tell them they have an address that does not exist and give them the correct address. I was told the driver has to TRY and deliver it once before they can make a change and the shipper has to be the one that corrects it.

Let's see, shipper doesn't live at my house or even know the address even though they were to have updated the file and then my wife tells them 3X on the phone when ordering the part.

If you use the correct 911 address formula they were off by 50 miles, so trying to get my part instead of driver looking for a place that does not exist, I thought I was doing UPS a favor and speeding delivery of my part.

After taking to the lady I finally ask to talk to a supervisor. She told me the same thing. She said she would have someone call before 8pm that evening.

I did receive a call about 30 minutes later (I had sent an email when cheking my tracking number and explained in it they had the wrong address) This person that called said,

I understand we have the wrong address, Is the correct address ---- E. ------- RD.

I said yes it is

she said she would make a note of it for the driver

Finally someone with some common sense

Back to the subject

I think they should go back to teaching basic math in school.
 
Coyote Jack said:
They don't work there because they have a 140 I.Q.

Jack
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Hahahahaha!!Rotflmfao!! Man you aint kidding.

I was loading sulfuric acid into tanker trucks before I got sick. I had one new truck driver try to tell me how the whole plant where I worked for 6 years now works. Then he says "I know because Im an engineer". Oh boy,says I. I guess thats why your driving a truck then...

Talk about lack of IQ. I aint that smart granted,but this guy was an idiot.
 
Just wait until you try to buy something and the credit card machine is busted. They pull out the mechanical cc machine and look at like it's a nuclear bomb trigger device, lol.
 
I see this happen way too many times with people who should know better. But too many have grown up with calculators and they don't know how to think on their own anymore.
Several years ago, my wife and I went to a high school football game. I walked up to the ticket window, pushed a $20 through the window and said "2adults". The girl on the other side put down two tickets on the twenty and pushed all back through the windo. I pushed the twenty back through the window and she pushed it back to me! Gave her two chances.

Worse than that was a girl that played on an 18 & Under fastpitch softball team I coached. She came up to me in the middle of an inning and asked me what time it was. I just held up my arm so she could see my analog watch. She says, "...uh, I don't do too well with those types of watches."
I couldn't believe it! Sure hope she did well with the full athletic scholarship she ended up with.
 
Wildcat's post reminded me of when I was supposed to get the rims for my Dart. I got a postcard in the mail from the shipping company. Fortunately the mailman must have known my name, but I do not know how it got to my house with the address on it. I don't remember much of the address other than my name, Q 22, and maybe a zip code. The shippers warehouse must have messed up the address because the correct address was on my order. When I called the number on the post card they told me that I had a couple days to come to their distribution center (40 miles away) to pick them up or they would send them back to the shipper. I asked if I gave them my correct address if they could ship them to me. Response: "Oh, yea... we could do that"
 
my step dad was bying bread at the acme click store he stack the quarter inpiles of 4 the kid had to count each one at a time he did not get 1 dollar 2 dollar and so on .he counted 1 2 3 4 /1dollar then 1 2 3 4 /2dollar/ my step dad stoped him and said watch this 4 at a time 1 dollar 2 dollar and so on/ the kid said thank you i did not know how to do that. lol and yes i went to voc. school too
 
My mantra is "if you don't use it you lose it."

When I was in college I had a math course just about every semester... statistics, accounting, etc. This was about 12 years ago so obviously we used calculators. Usually the complicated calculations they have you do are just a bunch of simple calculations strung together. It's much quicker to do the simple calculations in your head, rather than punching them into a calculator. I'm talking about stuff like 23 x 8 or 17 + 29... If I punched that type of thing into a calculator every time I would never have gotten through a test.

At the time I was working at a wire & cable warehouse, and I remember once we were doing inventory in teams of two. One guy would call out the quantity and the other guy would write it down. So let's say for example there was 6 full reels of 305 meters, a partial reel of 122 meters, and another partial reel of 46 meters on a pallet. I would just add them all up in an instant and call out one number. It got to the point where my partner (who was a musician) was calling bull s**t and checked the numbers by punching them into a calculator. Not being a "numbers guy" he was amazed that I could pull this off.

Could I pull it off now? NO FREAKIN' WAY. I don't work in a numbers oriented environment and whenever I do need to figure something out a calculator isn't far away. If you don't use it you lose it.
 
at least he knew how to count. we unfortunately use an outside company once a year for inventory, and they are the last people in the world that should be doing inventory work.

its hard to explain this situation being that its a staples thing, but ill give you a good parable. pretend there are 10 steelie rims in front of you. 4 painted black, 4 painted white, and 2 plain steel. very easy to see. well the report will say:

TOTAL: 10
Black:4
White: 3
Steel:4


This will exist many times over in the store. i understand some miscalculations because some products are hard to identify from others. but this particular incident...no way
 
Inventory. Gotta love it. When I was at Midas the entire back wall of the building was the rotor inventory. The store was a 100' long with four shelves of rotors. The guy who did inventory insisted that everything go from left to right, each shelf, top down. So if you were looking for rotor part number 100081 and the row ended at 100075 you had to walk all the way to the left and pick up 100076 and count in again.

I wound up replacing this guy. It didn't take long for one of my co-workers and I to start left to right on the top shelf, then drop down going right to left on the second shelf.

Instead of walking just 400 feet to do inventory this guy was walking 700 feet to do the same thing.
 
I called Best Buy about purchasing a TV and a wall bracket. My question was "do you have tvs that come with the wall bracket or do I have to buy it separately?" After about a 30 sec pause I asked "Are you still there?" He said "Yes I'm trying to think." I say "Do you work in the TV department area? He says "Yes but that question is hard to answer!!" That's when I say "Let go and call another place here in town that might know what the hell they are doing!!" I hung the phone up then I called Best Buy back and talked to the manager. After telling him exactly what I typed above he said "Do what!!! He actually said the question was to hard to answer?" I say "yes sir and I just wanted to let you know what kind of people you have working for you. Because if I owned a business I would really want to now why I just lost a sale." Then I said "I'm sorry but I am going somewhere else to get my TV." He apologized to me and we ended the call. The manager didn't sound very happy.
 
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