Ignorance to Make You Gasp

There are stupid people out there?

GASP.

That is a potential republican voter

I once walked into a White Castle in Columbus, Ohio, and when my turn came at the counter, i said: "Gimme a half dozen sliders." The guy behind the counter was at least a senior in high school, and in fact looked old enough to have gotten past that age (if not actually to have graduated). He repeated to himself "A half dozen . . . a half dozen . . ." while his hand, index finger extended, circled futilely over the touch screen of the cash register. He was obviously desparate searching for a clue on that screen, and having no luck.

Finally, he looked at me in despair and said: "A half dozen . . . how many is that . . . fifteen?"

There are people here in Texas that , when I tell them where I am from, still think I am a foreigner..


Some have even asked me how to get a green card..


I moved from the neighboring state.. ..and people dont even know it is there..

au wrote: That is a potential republican voter

Damn, au, the least you can do is warn us so's we won't choke by laughing. Thanks for the best laugh of the day.

When we visited St Louis many years ago, we were waiting to go up on the elevators on the arch. Some high school kids looked into our compartment, and moved on to others. Then a kid looked in, and said, they're human aren't they?

Along those same lines...

Why not see what happens when you show an under 25-yr-old an analogue watch and ask them to tell you the time. For far too many, they
have little idea of what the time is unless it's shown in numerical form.

Then of course, there's that treat you get when you're at a fast-food restaurant and the cashier is trying to make pocket change. Without the automated feature on the register that makes it for them they are lost.

Hi Ragman, Long time no see! I love it when I give them some pennies to round it out to the neared nickle, and they're trying to figure out how to ring that up on the cash register. Just today, at lunch, my bill came to $7.36, so I gave the cashier a $10 bill and .01c. That almost became a national crisis!

i better admit that i never managed the task of programming
the VCR ; now it would be too late anyhow since the VCR is pretty well obsolete , i hear .
recently i wanted to buy some DVD blanks . i went to the store and looked at the various classifications : + , - , +- etc .
so i asked the store clerk which one i should buy . "what does the label on your DVD player tell you ? " , he asked . i went home , checked the unit but couldn't find a description . back to the store i went .
"how old is the unit ? " , was the question .
"oh , about two or three years " , i said .
puzzled look of the clerk . "really that old ? " .
" a + might work " , he said ; "but i think your best bet is to buy an up-to-date unit ".
good night !
hbg

hbg, I bought a DVD recorder for my wife, because she loves to tape tv programs. It has an 80 hour internal harddrive, she can program the unit like she does her VCR, but she's never used it since I bought it over two years ago. It only sits by the tv. She's replaced some VCRs several times since then; even the tv combo in my computer room.

When I crossed the USA on a Greyhound bus in the 1970s, I was twice congratulated on how well I had learned English while in the USA. I'm from Britain, and am Scottish. Maybe it would have helped if I had told them I was from England....but maybe it wouldn't.

c.i. wrote :
"Just today, at lunch, my bill came to $7.36, so I gave the cashier a $10 bill and .01c. That almost became a national crisis! "

unless i have exact change , i pretty well have given up on "making the change easier " .
i'm sure the store clerks thank me for that .

i had a funny experience at the supermarket last week .
three "italian" ladies were in front of me . they had purchased a number of small items and kind of jumbled them together . they started to sort them out at the cash register and then were trying to "help" each other with paying for six grapes , one tomatoe ... all the while talking in italian to each other .
the young cashier was getting quite frazzled .
when it was my turn , he asked : "are you paying by credit card , sir ? " .
i nodded my head ; he smiled and said : "thank you , sir ! " .
as i picked up my bag of groceries , the three ladies were going back to the cashier , spilled out their proceries and claimed that he had not charged them correctly .
i was a coward , i left quickly !
hbg

The lack of geography in our grade school curriculum has made most Americans ignorant about where places exist on this planet. Most never heard of Iraq before the current war, and couldn't point it out on a map after the war started.
I would venture to say most don't know where Washington DC is on a map of the US.

When I was in my early twenties, I was a manager in a Supermarket when the first "electronic" tills were introduced. Before this momentuous leap in technology, the cashier took the note (bill) from the customer, placed it in a clip on the till, and counted the change from the till, into his/her hand.
The change would then be counted back to the customer, up to the value of the note they'd tendered.
eg....Customer gives £10 note for her shopping bill of £6.25. Cahier counts back change...."that's £6.25 - 30 -50 - £7 - 8 -9 - 10" (using the denominations avalable in the till, of course)

Well....these new tills had an "amount tendered" button, which then gave the cashier a figure for the amount to be given in change.
No more counting back took place from that day on, and that's where I think this whole thing about not understanding money started.
It's as if it suddenly removed all common sense and basic understanding of numbers.

On the second day of having these new tills installed, I had a customer (an honest one, fortunately) come up to me and tell me that the cashier had given her £45 too much in change.
When I looked at the ticket, the cashier had logged £50 tendered, instead of £5. She'd hit the zero button once more than she should have.

So the woman stood there, after giving over a fiver, only to have over £45 put back into her hand! The cashier had become a non questioning moron overnight, just carrying out the instructions given to her by a machine. Basically, it had caused that part of her brain to switch off.
She was fine at maths the day before, and had counted back change for several years with no problem.

Technology, eh?

I think you've got a good point, LE. Many people have become accustomed to a world which provides them the answers they seek, often electronically and often digitally. People who work in electric power generation plants complained after digital displays were introduced in the early 70s, and the old, analog dials were put back in--they found it easier to look at a bank of indicator dials and look for any which did not appear to be in the right place.

But many young people have never been exposed to analog displays. Many modern automobiles have digital displays instead of dials to indicate the speed. Their clocks and watches all have digital displays, rather than hour and minute hands; when they learn maths at school the carry calculators with them, which they are allowed to take to examinations. I suspect they no longer even learn to do maths "long hand" with paper and pencil.

Many of us represent a transitional generation. Although many men and women my age (50s) are intimidated by computers, i'd say half or more are familiar and comfortable with computers. A man i know was amused because some children he picked up and brought home were in trouble because they had not called--but the protested that "grandpa" only had a rotary telephone, and they didn't know how to operate (feeble excuse, all they had to do was ask "grandpa") such a device.

When i was a child, one picked up the telephone, waited until Betty answered, and then asked to be connected to the house of one's choice. Then we got rotary telephones. I was in high school before "touch tone" phones became common. We listened to the radio, but i was already in grammar school before we got a television, and we often didn't want to watch "teevee" because we didn't want to miss our favorite radio programs. There was a period of transition from the older world into which we were born, and the brave new world which we know inhabit.

Many young people are complete creatures of the digital, electronic world into which we've grown over time. They have absolutely no problem programming electronics, even without a manuel (which they might not be able to read), and they are accustomed to seeing an answer on a screen, and not to figuring some things out for themselves.

Sad though, like that poor kid who didn't know what a half dozen of something means.

It's funny you mentioned that about putting the money on a clip on the till while figuring the change.

One of the first part-time jobs I had as a teenager was a a dept store (hosiery and handbags thank you) and I had to sub as a cashier when it got busy, over Christmas. The first thing they emphasized when they were training you was to NEVER put the money in the register until after making the change. Obviously to keep customers from claiming they gave you a bigger bill, or in truth because sometimes get so busy you can have a brain fart and think, "was that a $20 or a $10 they gave me.

Nowadays, it seems no one pays any attention to that. There's a couple local stores in my neighborhood I'm in and out of all the time, to the point where I'm friendly with the cashiers. One day when it was slow I asked the girl about that, and apparantly they don't teach them that anymore.

If I'm buying something really inexpensive, like less than $2.00, and I'm handing them a $20.00 or a $50.00, when they say "That's $1.27.." I'll hand them the bill and say "Out of $20.00" so they can't "forget", put it in the register, and think it was a $10.00.

Back to the topic.....Once in the supermarket, a young woman was looking over the fresh meats, which as we all know, sometimes makes us think we need to take out a 2nd mortgage. Anyway, she commented to me "Boy, this stuffs expensive" You could tell she was new to shopping for herself. She picked up a cheap, fatty cut of meat and said, "well, this is only $4.00" I mentioned to her a much better cut right near it was on sale at a better price per pound, and it would be a real bargain to get such a lean cut for less.

"No" she said, "that meat is more expensive, see it says $7.00..."
Me: "Well, yes, but see, it's a MUCH bigger piece, and it's much less per pound."

She: "well, that doesn't make any sense, this one's cheaper!"

I hoped she enjoyed her coronary.

my personal ignorance runs so deep I am forced to carry an inhaler everywhere I go.

They walk among us...and they reproduce!

I rely on a wheelchair and I'm sterile.