I gave a the clerk at McDonalds a 50 cent coin. She looked at it and turned to the manager and asked " Do we take these?"

 

It's amazing how many people don't count back change anymore. To the point that it surprises me when it does happen. This was the first thing I learned when I started my first retail job in high school. Why do so many managers not teach that anymore? Probably because they can't do it themselves.

 

Im not too sure what the kids are being taught in school these days, or what they are not being taught. Anyway at the farm where Im at every day is a girl almost 18 yrs old and in her last year of high school. She seems smart and all that so one day I told her this little joke about a blond that was cutting her grass and her cat was hiding in the long grass. She didnt see the cat and the mower cut off its tail. Well the blond thought quickly and picked up the cat and its tail and took it to Wallmart...Why did she take it to Wallmart? Because Wallmart is the biggest retailer in North America...This girl looked at me with a dumb look and didnt catch on so I tried to explain it to her. Seems she didnt know or wasnt taught what a retail store is. She even told some of her friends at school and none of them knew either. Makes me wonder what schools are for now. Anyway she is a good kid and will get along just fine in this world I hope [knowing retail or not]

 

I LOVE being in a fast food place and having the power go out!! no cash registers to figure it for them!!

want to be treated right? go an order something at that power outtage time!
the manager is better than a fire chief at getting every job done perfectly!
he handles the counter and counts out your bill and the change! bets food too as they have to slow down to SEE it!
I try to stay away from those places (pounds go to hips) but add me to the club who likes respect for money and business.


AKPAUL"so I drove him to the North Pole" yeah- how many of us can say that line!!!

hehehe Heidi in NY

 

if you think that's funny try giving out $2 bills.

 

For a lot of them, if they have to do anything other than read the numbers on the register, they can't do it. Unfortunately, we are becoming more and more dependent on those numbers and the electronic devices that they are attached too. We use depth mics here at work to measure bolt stretch on the reactor and the main coolant pumps and most of the young'ns can't use the old style Starrets unless thay have a digital read out in numbers. And don't even mention Vernier calipers, phhh.........

 

Been there done that, thought she was going to call the police on me till I told her to call the manager. I put them in the safe now (the $2 bills that is).

 

All our machinist use Starret's. Actually, that is all we will have calibrated and our machinists aren't allowed to use anything that is not calibrated.

That being said, I personally wouldn't hire a CNC machinist if they didn't have manual machinist experience. There is a big difference in the accuracy and speed of the two different schools.

 

I hear you there. I went to a place here somewhat locally that builds log skidders to see what kind of machine work they could do for us (very limited since we are nuclear and have special requirements) and they had machine operators in place of machinists. All they do is place the stock in the machine and hit START. The guy in the booth at the end of the building does all the design and loads the info to the machine. Some times I really wonder where we are going. On the other hand, it appears that this type of work makes things cheaper for us in the long run but I fear the loss of the know how of you know what I mean.

 

When I was in the service 7 years ago our lead QuarterMaster (the guy who plots the charts) required all of his people to be able to navigate by sexton and had to use it for one third of their plots. When the younger ones would ask him why the couldn't just use the GPS he said what would you do if there was no GPS. This guy wasn't old guard either he had only been in for around 10 years at the time.

 

On vacation in Florida, a cashier at a restaurant asked where we were from, my dad replied Nebraska. She looked confused and said (I am not making this up) "What state is that in?

 

I don't know... I like to think of myself as fairly intelligent. If you don't use math on a daily basis or rely strictly on a calculator to do it you're going to get a little rusty sometimes. The increasing use of calculators have turned our math processing centers of our brain to mush.

I've been in retail for the past 6 years. I've done every job there is to be done. Even as a manager, I will tell you there is no single job that is tougher than being a cashier at a retail store. They have a lot on their minds. It's understandable when they are a little slow to count out change should the computer not tell you what it is.

Even I will be a little slow on that sometimes. Sit me in a college math class and I'll zoom through problems like no other... but in a real world setting things aren't quite as cut and dry. I'll have to think for a second. If we were required to count back change on every customer I bet we would be a whole lot better at it.

 

I don't know dude, I've been in plenty of college math classes, but I learned the skillz to count change in 3rd or 4th grade! Can't imagine it's more difficult than Calculus or Differential Equations.

 

I learned that skill in elementary school, too. What I'm was getting at was when you're in a classroom to do math specifically you're in "a zone." Things are different outside of that classroom because you have to factor in a lot of different variables such as a line accumulating as a result of refiguring the change, rude customers, if you're going to get in trouble for making a mistake, etc.

 

I agree. I'm in management and sometimes I have to work the retail counter during peak periods and will start having brain farts especially when they give me the "quarter". Things start to swarm real fast as the line gets longer and you can see the frustration on the customer's face because you're not as fast as they think you ought to be. I take it in stride and don't let it bother me.