to be slightly "wow really" at this

[Lonnie]

I wasnt in the mood to cook tonight dh was out and it was just me and the kids so we decided to have a take away went to fish and chips shop was served by a very polite I would estimate 16-17 year old whom took my order and then said that will be £11.90 I handed her £22 and at this point the chip shop owner stepped closer to her and said "seeing you how gave wrong change yesterday with the £10 now be careful today" She went "I dont know how to do that I dont know how much I need to give her back" I was quite shocked and just said "£10.10" but after i was thinking this is really not a hard piece of math and I would expect someone working in a shop to be able to do a piece of math like that in their head. at the dinner table I asked my lot whom could do it asking them to put their hand up in the air once they had it all bar dd3 (age 6) could do it within 1 min ds and dn (8 and 16) doing it within max 10 seconds.. (ds being a bit of a math wiz I did expect him to be able to that fast) dd2 whom struggles in school was the longest (age 10 ) but still got it within the minute..

So I am obviously aware that this girl could have had issues but I find it quite that she wasnt able to do this if she worked in a fish and chips shop (she isnt new Ive seen her there before she has been working there for a while)

I did ask cant the till do that for you?"+ and she went no but the owner went well yes so perhaps once I left she was taught how to use the till in that way

Lonnie, I am dyslexic too. Quite likely more severely so than you or your DC.

I would never be shocked at someone doing what this girl did. Personally, I have almost no visual memory, so I can remember that a twenty pound note means 20. I can do mental arithmetic when it is presented to me in a form I can cope with, but I struggle to keep digits in my short term memory. The time it takes to look away from the 20 pound note, and to look at the till keyboard, might easily be too much for me. This girl didn't even have that.

Towards the end of this thread it sounds as if you might be realizing you got it wrong. I hope so. Whatever I do, it will never be enough for people who judge as you did in your OP. Please don't judge people like that: you can never be sure of the reasons why they do what they do.

No, because there are certin posters where no matter what they say or do it will never be right. Others can do no wrong.

Sorry, I mean, I can't remember that a twenty pound note means 20.

my mental arithmetic is pretty good, have worked in pubs etc, but these days I would be thrown by you giving £22 and not £20.

riven re the calculator :-) i have two degrees but my driving instructor has written 'right' and 'left' on the dashboard for me more than once!

I can work it out ..its just annoying when someone gives you say a tenner and a 20p to pay for something thats £4.5p ..just give me the tenner ..its ok to give the exact 5p ..iyswim

not surprised in the least dd15 a* predicted would be like that - kids rubbish at mental maths these days especially girls

exactly the same thing happened to me when I was a teenager working in a greengrocer's. I had to give change and with the shop owner and the customer looking at me intently I could hardly manage. After she had left the owner said "Maths not your strong point?"
I was too to tell him that I was doing maths and further maths at A level and going on to study maths at degree level. I do in general have very good mental arithmetic skills but the pressure wore me down

I have however started a similar thread in the past about two shop workers who couldn't between them work out a simple sum. I was (and still am) a bit shocked - but more that lots of MNers came on and said they couldn't do it too.

While I can see the shopkeeper might have flustered the girl, which is a separate issue; but I don't see why so many are getting shirty with the OP about someone unable to do a very basic part of their job.

Lonnie I don't post often but I can not let this go without saying my piece.
I too am dyslexic therefore sympathize with your grammar being pulled apart in your posts.

However, what you have done to this poor girl is what has happened to you here online.
You say you were polite and pleasant, however it could have come across as very patronizing to the girl and she was most likely very embarrassed.
I say this as I have worked in bars, restaurants and shops and come across this situations many times and every time I 'panic' and the last thing I would want is some-one drawing attention to my inability .
I would have thought being dyslexic (which also affects basic maths skills) you would have been more sympathetic to the girl.

I'm an auditor and I'm rubbish at mental arithmetic. That part of my brain just doesn't seem to work properly. Give me pen and paper or a calculator and I'm away but in my head? Nope.

I've only ever been asked to score at darts in the pub once. It wasn't a great success! I can sort your accounts out no problem tho!

I got a B at GCSE maths.

Cant add up for toffee and still use my fingers.

I think the moral of the story is, don't ask if you are being unreasonable, if you are not prepared to be told that you are........

Oh dear - I think in a stressful situation or if tired, I'd have to think about that quite hard. Good for your children for having good mental arithmatic skills, though - always impresses me when kids can do things like that quicker than me.

I find I can add up very quickly, but taking away is trickier...

Don't write her off as completely thick. I used to get terribly muddled up with the till when I did a summer job working in the canteen of the local turkey factory. The guys thought I was a complete dolt. I speak as someone who has a 1st class degree and M.A., reads Homer in the original and got 85% in my most recent Philosophy of Mind essay. Name changed due to smug swanking of last sentence...

Oh God i have a till that tells me what change to give in the shop i work in ...... and i still get confused if the customer suddenly 'finds' extra pennies to give me when i've just worked it all out....

Aaargh!

Still not sure of your point OP.

Shop work is not my day job - my day job i'm flippin BRILLIANT at .

I'm always impressed at chipper staff, it seems very complicated! I work in retail, I hate the 'here is 21.70' scenario, it throws me! (A in O Level maths, 100 years ago).

I hate people who piss about giving odd amounts so they get a more suitable combination of change.
My Dh does it all thetime.
I tend not to say 'hurry up you great knobber' in front of the shop staff.
It annoys him

HTHs

i am hopeless with mental maths but i used to "count on" when i worked in a shop as a saturday girl

so if someone gave me a £5 note for something that cost 3.20,

id get another 20p and say to myself 3.40
then 10 p and say 3.50

then a 50p and say 4

then a pound coin and say 5. so i learned to "count on" from the amount it cost to the amount they gave me - so giving the correct change!

i was much relieved when i got tills that worked it out for me!

arf @ pag.

Im so glad there are other till workers who cannot stand people messing about giving you the odd coppers. as well as those who make you wait until theyve spent ages looking for the change and then havent actually got it - even worse are those who give you the note, wait until youve taken the correct change out then say oh I'll just give you the odd coppers - then you have to put the whole blooming lot back in the till and start again.