I’m not that great when it comes to math. When I work cashier, I make sure to take everything one step at a time to avoid confusing myself. A customer comes to my register to buy a pair of cheap earbuds. He hands me a $100 bill. As usual, I set the bill on the counter while counting the change. This way, I remember what money I was given.
After I’m done, and before handing him the change, he says that he has a $20 bill he wants to pay with, and he takes back his $100 bill. I start putting the change back in the drawer while I wonder how I’m gonna figure out the new total. As I’m doing this, he tells me that he left his $20 in his car, and he has nothing else to pay me with.
Confused, I say that he can use the $100 bill, instead, but he just repeats about getting the money from the car and walks off. I have a feeling he isn’t going to come back for his headphones, but I leave them at my register anyway.
Later, I wondered if I had been scammed, but I never handed him any money. After reading a few stories on this site, I realized he was trying to scam me but my methods to prevent me from mixing up numbers stopped a scammer.
(I am working drive-thru in a popular Canadian coffee shop. A lady pulls up to the speaker and orders a box of twenty timbits. She asks to have the box divided into three bags. I tell her we can do this, but then she goes on and on and about how each bag needs to be exactly the same. Normally, I would tell my coworker to just put seven into each bag, but she is being insufferable, so I ring in a box of twenty timbits plus one timbit extra.)
Customer: “What is this? What are you charging me the extra timbit for?! I asked for twenty timbits to be divided equally between three bags!”
Me: “Well, ma’am, as you already know, twenty can’t be divided equally by three, so we had to charge you for one extra one.”
(I thought she was going to implode. I had never seen someone turn that shade of red before.)
(I am making a day trip with my teenage niece. To keep her busy on the train, I bought a book with sudokus for beginners. Keep in mind that she doesn’t believe in herself and thinks she is bad at maths.)
Me: “Here you go.”
Niece: “Sudoku? Isn’t that difficult?”
Me: “Not really. And these are super easy.”
(I explain how sudokus work and she starts. She completes the grid in no time and with ease as if she is writing a letter. She completes a second and third one in under a minute, sighs, turns the book to the last sudoku and completes that one in record time, as well.)
Niece: “Auntie, this is too easy.”
Me: “So I see. You know what? I’ll buy you a new one for the ride home.”
(True to my word, I bought one that was one level under “expert,” and she happily worked herself through them. Those took a bit more time to be solved. I finished the super easy ones.)
(My husband and I are following a set of instructions that include the phrase, “Press gently, but very firmly.” We are getting frustrated by the fact that, a) it doesn’t seem to be doing much, and b) they haven’t elaborated more on HOW gently, HOW firmly, etc. It should be noted that my husband is a mechanical engineer.)
Husband: “Just how firmly do they mean?”
Me: *somewhat snarky* “’Press gently, but with a force of however many PSI…’”
(PSI stands for “Pounds per Square Inch.”)
Husband: “No, PSI would be too large for something this small. I don’t have anywhere near an inch to push on here.”
Me: “Okay… How about PS-half-inch? PS-quarter-inch?”
Husband: “That’s not going to work, either. You probably need something in metric measurements. They scale down more easily.”
Me: *a bit snarky again* “Okay, fine. PSCM? Pounds per square centimeter?”
(My husband got a horrified look on his face and told me this was why I was not an engineer. Apparently, one cannot mix metric and imperial units quite as easily as I thought. I assumed that there would be an equation that could calculate it, but apparently, such an equation would be a massive pain to work with.)
(I am an 18-year-old, new nursing student at my local college. We are doing our first ever med pass. As I’m a nervous wreck, I make a small error in my dosage calculation. The instructor is pretty laid back.)
Me: “I will give half a tablet.”
Instructor: “Who in the world taught you how to do math?!”
Me: “Your mom.”
(He looked at me like I was insane before realizing that I graduated from the high school where his mother teaches math. Yes, she really did teach me Algebra 1. We had a good laugh about it.)
