Math
Last week I purchased a burger at Burger King for $1.58. The counter girl took my $2 and I was digging for my change when I pulled 8 cents from my pocket and gave it to her. She stood there, holding the nickel and 3 pennies, while looking at the screen on her register.

I sensed her discomfort and tried to tell her to just give me two quarters, but she hailed the manager for help.

While he tried to explain the transaction to her, she stood there and cried.

Why do I tell you this?

Please read more about the "history of teaching math":

Teaching Math In 1950

************************ A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?



Teaching Math In 1960

************************ A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?



Teaching Math In 1970

************************ A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. Did he make a profit?



Teaching Math In 1980

*********************** A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.



Teaching Math In 1990

************************ By cutting down beautiful forest trees, the logger makes $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the forest birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down the trees. (There are no wrong  answers.)



Teaching Math In 2005

************************

El hachero vende un camion carga por $100. La cuesta de production es.............

$158 for a burger?

Quoted: I dont know about wher eyou live but where I do most kids are in calc before they leave highschool. People that work at fast food restraunts are usually just idiots, period.

Agreed.  My children's HS math courses are much harder than mine ever were.

I happen to agree with the joke.

Most cash registers now have a display that tells them the amount to give back to the customer.  If you give them some pennies, it confuses them.

I am so old, I remember when you had to count change.

Sure it is a joke, but it is still BS. I am doing stuff that my parents never even heard of (no college education from either....but still).

Quoted: I happen to agree with the joke. Most cash registers now have a display that tells them the amount to give back to the customer.  If you give them some pennies, it confuses them. I am so old, I remember when you had to count change.

I remember when you could get a burger, fries, and a coke for well under a buck. .03 to mail a letter and gas was .17 a gallon.  Old fart here.

I've had  numerous high school age and older brain lock on this can they all be idiots?  maybe they just lack lodgeic reasoning or the I don't want the wallet full of one's pocket full of change concept

Quoted: I happen to agree with the joke. Most cash registers now have a display that tells them the amount to give back to the customer.  If you give them some pennies, it confuses them. I am so old, I remember when you had to count change.

Hey, I'm not yet 21 and I was taught the proper way to count change in grade school.

I still just hand out what the register tells me unless it looks off somehow, then I count it out.

At our local H-E-B it used to be a requirement that cashiers could count out change without the register telling them anything, which came in handy whenever one went on the fritz or the power went out, as it does on a fairly regular basis on that side of town.

The new H-E-B that is five times larger, has lower quality products that you cannot find without hiring sherpa guides for a massive expedition into the unknown, and fancy computerized registers no longer has that requirement and hires dumb kids who can't give you the proper change even with the machine telling them what to give you instead of competent, friendly people like they used to.

Quoted: Most cash registers now have a display that tells them the amount to give back to the customer.

And even THAT doesn't help some of them.

A few weeks ago, I was tasked with taking my 14 year old niece to the Green Day concert in Manchester.  So, being the good uncle, I picked her up early, and we went to a place called Cheers, in Concord.  Had a nice meal, plenty of laughs.  Waitress comes by to pick up the bill and cash.  She comes back, lays the change on the table, and walks away.  I looked at my niece, and asked her what was wrong with this picture?  

The bill came to $31.58.  I gave the waitress $40.  I received $9 in change.  Last time I checked, 40.00 - 31.58 = 8.42.    Apparently, in the new math style, you round it up to the next dollar.    

My niece and I had a good laugh over it.  In the waitress' defense, she WAS blond.

Quoted: I am so old, I remember when you had to count change.

Like me, you remember when they counted change like this:

"OK, that was $3.57. There's 58, 59, 60, 65, 75, and $4. 1 is 5 and 5 makes 10. Thank you."

Now, of course, the dimwits count like this:

"Okay, your change 5, 6, 25, 35, 40, 1, 2, 3. $6.43. Have SOOOPER day!!"

As if counting that way tells you anything.

I always give an oddball amount of change just to see their faces distort. Just love screwing up the cashier.

Quoted: I happen to agree with the joke. Most cash registers now have a display that tells them the amount to give back to the customer.  If you give them some pennies, it confuses them. I am so old, I remember when you had to count change.

My boss loves to tell the story - it happened a year or two ago - of the young lady who told him the store didn't carry any size 7-1/2 hats; all of their hats were in 1/8th sizes. So he finally managed to leave the store with a 7-4/8 hat.......

I just get riled up that people can't count your change back to you anymore! Dimwits!

Nothing pisses me off more than going into a store, buying say $37.66 worth of merchandise and paying with a hundred dollar bill. The just shove your change at you and state the amount. They force you to stand there and do the math in your head. If you ask them to count it back...they shit themselves.

I've even had people count back the change to me by merely counting out only the change. You still have to figgure out the change due you ahead of time to know if they are giving you the right amount. Nothing like trying to do the math in your head while some idiot is counting out the change amount. fourty-eleven, seventy-seventy fourty. blah blah blah. If you can't start with the amount due and count up to what I tendered....just shut the fuck up! DAMN!

Aint nothing like spending your money and walking out the door wondering if you got the correct change back...or if you just got screwed.

Rant off  

Quoted: I dont know about wher eyou live but where I do most kids are in calc before they leave highschool. People that work at fast food restraunts are usually just idiots, period.

Calculus or not, many young people, myslef NOT included, can not do simple math in their heads.  To be honest, calc is easier than balancing your check book

Quoted: I happen to agree with the joke. Most cash registers now have a display that tells them the amount to give back to the customer.  If you give them some pennies, it confuses them. I am so old, I remember when you had to count change.

When Moses was a baby, OP?

G23c

Quoted: Quoted: I dont know about wher eyou live but where I do most kids are in calc before they leave highschool. People that work at fast food restraunts are usually just idiots, period. Calculus or not, many young people, myslef NOT included, can not do simple math in their heads.  To be honest, calc is easier than balancing your check book

Um... you're kidding right?

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I dont know about wher eyou live but where I do most kids are in calc before they leave highschool. People that work at fast food restraunts are usually just idiots, period. Calculus or not, many young people, myslef NOT included, can not do simple math in their heads.  To be honest, calc is easier than balancing your check book Um... you're kidding right?

Overexaggerating slightly.  It's still easy though

Sorry to go off topic but this thread reminds me of something I saw at my barber shop several years ago. The barber has a real old cash register, the kind that had keys on it for all the different currency amounts.  Anyway a father and his young son were paying for their cuts when the son asked "what is that?" pointing to the old school cash register. The barber replied, without a moments hesitation, "That's a Jewish Piano son"  Still cracks me up to this day when I think about it.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I dont know about wher eyou live but where I do most kids are in calc before they leave highschool. People that work at fast food restraunts are usually just idiots, period. Calculus or not, many young people, myslef NOT included, can not do simple math in their heads.  To be honest, calc is easier than balancing your check book Um... you're kidding right?

Sounds about right to me.  I stopped balancing my checkbook.  It made my brain hurt.  

Maybe it was just a joke.  Hmmm.  

When I was in grade school that 1980s and 1990s thing was about right.
but when I got in the 8th grade I was in Algebra a year early and had finished AP Calculus by the end of high school.

In schools you have the smart and absurdly stupid now, there isn't much of an in between anymore from what I can tell. Might be true in the real world also.