How’d you do that?

I began training a new guy last night. He’s a young college student. Nice guy. I like him.

As often happens with guys in training, every once in a while he got into a jam on the register. One example, a customer wanted a product that was $1.99 and gave him a twenty dollar bill. He accidentally hit the Cash button instead of the $20 button, which would have let the register figure out the change. So he was standing there, holding the twenty, looking confused. He turned to me and asked, “How do I figure out how much change to give him?"

I printed the receipt so I would know the total, and told him, “Just count it backwards.” And I gave the customer a penny, three ones, a five, and a ten.

When the customer left, my co-worker was amazed, “How’d you do that?”

This was the second time I had done this for him. I explained again about counting backwards to get the change. I still don’t think he understood. And this is nothing about him - it’s calculators and computers. By doing all the work for you, they dumb you down.

My father-in-law used to grouse about the “young people today” and “how none of ‘em can count your change back to you.” It’s obviously a generational thing. I don’t mean boomers, or baby x-ers, I mean the techno-generation, those who have grown up with computers and calculators. And I’m affected as well. Thanks to cell phones, I hardly know anybody’s phone number anymore, my family’s on speed dial (“dial! Huh!! They are each assigned a number) and everyone else I call is easily accessible in my phone book.

You see? Calculators, computers, and cell phones: dumbing us down!