A Friendly Calculation

(I am a 14-year-old sophomore in high school. My family is going through a pretty rough patch and money is tight. However, I need a certain calculator for my honors math class in school. My mom and I go to an office supply store with price matching to get it as cheap as possible. As our Internet is not working, we plan to use the store’s half-hour free computer access to try to find someone who offers it for less than the usual $124.99.)

Me: “Hey, Mom, look. This place is selling the same calculator for $100!”

Mom: “Great! Let’s print it out to show the cashier. Our half hour is almost up.”

(We go to the checkout with our price-match evidence.)

Cashier: “I see you found a valid price-match! That brings your price down to $100. However, we’re also offering a ten-percent discount on all calculators this week! So that’ll be $90. But there’s also a $15 rebate available… I’m not sure it’ll go through, though. So I’ll just go ahead and take that off your total.”

(He does so, then prints out the receipt, and the rebate does go through, along with the $15 discount he already put on it.)

Cashier: “Well, what do you know?! The rebate did go through! Fortunately for you lovely ladies, I don’t feel like fixing it. So congratulations on your $60 calculator!”

(We’re doing much better financially now, but when this happened, we were literally struggling to pay basic bills like water and electricity. That $65 discount helped enormously to get through that month. To the cashier who helped us, thank you! You have no idea the impact your generosity had.)