This is an actual true story.
I went into a store this morning, and made a small purchase. The total came to $3.58. I handed the cashier four dollar bills, and then I told her I had eight cents. She had already rung up the $4 into the machine, and my additional change clearly perplexed her. She took a moment, doing some quick math in her head, and then she handed me a dime and a penny.
I could have let it go I guess, but I felt that I was well within my right to correct her and not get short changed. I told her that she owed me fifty cents, and she took back her dime and penny and gave me two quarters, but I could tell she wasn’t really sure.
So here’s my question – how the hell did she get that she owed me 11 cents? When she first rang it up, the machine said that she owed me 42 cents. Than I gave her 8. How does 42 plus 8 equal 11?
3 users commented in " A Math Problem "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackScary, isn’t it??
Most likely explanation is that she noticed that the penny in her register was a rare 1873 Double Liberty Indian Head penny, worth approximately $45,000.
Now, it is indisputable that she owed you 42 cents. However, when you made a gesture like “hold on, lemme give you some more money here,” she clearly assumed that you were trying to make things easier by handing her an additional $44,996.52.
So in handing you the Indian Head penny plus the standard-issue FDR dime, she was making the correct change.
Duh.
When I worked in a convenience store during high school, I would often panic while calculating change. My mind absolutely blanked. Sometimes the person would have to tell me how much I owed him/her. I was getting straight A’s in Calculus at the time.
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