Counting change
09-26-2011, 05:18 AM
#31
Senior Member
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Greeneville, TN
Posts: 796
Several years ago DH and I had a small yogurt shop. Employees were HS kids. I taught them to make change in the manner you describe and one of them asked me one time. Why bother? The cash register does it for you. I asked her how she was going to do her job if the register stopped working or the power went out. She replied that she would close the door and go home. Needless to say we hired a more enlightened employee. Ann in TN
09-26-2011, 05:18 AM
#32
Super Member
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: NY
Posts: 1,501
That is how I count change. My children know how to do this, but only because I made them learn it when they were doing the how to count money math in school. They would come home and we would spend some time each day to figure out how to do it without calculators. It drove them nuts! Now, if I can only get them to understand tax..... LOL
09-26-2011, 05:21 AM
#35
Super Member
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Coastal Georgia
Posts: 1,508
One should always count there change and no reason for them to get upset because we do. Many cashiers today don't even count what they give you. They just give you what it says and put it in your hands without first checking to see that they themselves counted it right.
Speaking of cashiers I have a couple funny stories to tell. Several years ago a gent was at Walmart and paying for his merchandise with cash which were all two dollar bills. The gal refused to take it saying it was not real money because we did not have two dollar bills. So we proceeded to tell her it was real money and it was good. She still refused saying we were wrong....yet we were born in this country and use the money all the time. We had to deman that a floor manager be called. She refused. We refused to move until a manager was called. One finally came and told her it was real money. I traded the two dollar bills from that gent that day and gave him bills she understood. Point being these cashiers are trained only in $1,5, 10 and $20 bills. Most of them cannot count the way we learned when we were in school.
Another incident happened a few years back when speciality one dollar coins were made and I tried using them again in Walmart and the gal ....different cashier refusing to take them. These were duplicates of ones I save. We went through the same routine again and the gal was told it was American money and to accept it.
It would be nice if retailers trained there employees on all the various money pieces we have in this country. And also trained them on counting change back to customers instead of just putting it in there hands and trying to rush you out of there.
I always make sure to count what they give me back and don't care if they get upset that we do.
Speaking of cashiers I have a couple funny stories to tell. Several years ago a gent was at Walmart and paying for his merchandise with cash which were all two dollar bills. The gal refused to take it saying it was not real money because we did not have two dollar bills. So we proceeded to tell her it was real money and it was good. She still refused saying we were wrong....yet we were born in this country and use the money all the time. We had to deman that a floor manager be called. She refused. We refused to move until a manager was called. One finally came and told her it was real money. I traded the two dollar bills from that gent that day and gave him bills she understood. Point being these cashiers are trained only in $1,5, 10 and $20 bills. Most of them cannot count the way we learned when we were in school.
Another incident happened a few years back when speciality one dollar coins were made and I tried using them again in Walmart and the gal ....different cashier refusing to take them. These were duplicates of ones I save. We went through the same routine again and the gal was told it was American money and to accept it.
It would be nice if retailers trained there employees on all the various money pieces we have in this country. And also trained them on counting change back to customers instead of just putting it in there hands and trying to rush you out of there.
I always make sure to count what they give me back and don't care if they get upset that we do.
09-26-2011, 05:25 AM
#36
Senior Member
Join Date: Jan 2011
Posts: 697
math - dont get me started! I hated math in school, all the way from grade school thru college. Now, I cannot stay away from books on physics!
kids in the USA, for the most part, hate math. Not because its hard, but because you actually have to take a few min to think thru the work! As a group, Americans do not like anything they cannot do instantly, and 3 things at once. With all the instant hardware out there, kids dont care about thinking, only about doing.
Schools have a hard time dealing with this - this need for speed in all things. Plus, growing up, it was said by every adult, "girls are bad in math," what a crock that was! we use math every time we alter a recipe, make a quilt, do anything around the home. Don't let a teacher tell you, well, its harder now, theres more to learn out here. 0-9 have been around since the Greeks or earlier, we have an alphabet that hasnt changed in 500 yrs. (and, I was in literacy volunteers, trying to help adults learn to read - there are 1000 site words out there that we use more than 80% thru our whole lifetime - if you make sure your child knows these words thats 80% of the battle for learning how to read well). Mostly, kids do what they see their parents doing - if you dont act scared of numbers, and read in the home that will help your kids more tha you can imagine.
Here's all anyone needs to do math: grasp the concept that the numbers we use are 0 thru 9, and then, how you can take those numbers and add them, and subtract them. That is all there is to math: 10 numbers, adding and subtracting. Division and multiplication are formulas to add and subtract faster. After that, once you learn the formula, the "tricks", the short cuts to that long list of adding and subtracting, well, you can do rocket science. After that its a matter of learning there are what I call recipes, or formulas (depending on what doesnt intimidate you!) that can manipulate those 0-9 numbers. Algebra, calc etc - once you grasp the idea of the symbols, the Xs, Ys, the numbers will always come down to 0 thru 9. The biggest block is always in your own head saying its too hard and you're to dumb to "get it".
The best gift a parent or grand can give their kids is teaching them their numbers 0-9 and not making them afraid to use them. A love for numbers, reading, and writing are just about as basic as it gets - after that its all gravy. Teaching your child that they can do anything they put their minds and hearts in after these basics are understood is a gift to them, and to the rest of us, really - they are our future even if we've never met any of them.
If I had not been afraid of math growing up I could have been a phsyicist and been quite happy about it. I hated math and got a A in a college level accounting course that was mandatory for me to take. It took 60 yrs for math to click in my head, like turning on a light.
We are producing a society so dumbed down we are importing engineers and math folks from overseas. Hubs retired as a Chemical PE and they were hard pressed to find a replacement; he worked with Egyptian, Indian, Polish, British and Italian engineers (not American!) who could barely speak English but were really good in math!
As for making change, with machines that think for you a person only needs to know how to push the right buttons in the right order - its impossibly sad to me when anyone cannot count out proper change to the penny. This is second grade work. How in the world can anyone get a job in this country when they cannot function at a second grade level! sharet
kids in the USA, for the most part, hate math. Not because its hard, but because you actually have to take a few min to think thru the work! As a group, Americans do not like anything they cannot do instantly, and 3 things at once. With all the instant hardware out there, kids dont care about thinking, only about doing.
Schools have a hard time dealing with this - this need for speed in all things. Plus, growing up, it was said by every adult, "girls are bad in math," what a crock that was! we use math every time we alter a recipe, make a quilt, do anything around the home. Don't let a teacher tell you, well, its harder now, theres more to learn out here. 0-9 have been around since the Greeks or earlier, we have an alphabet that hasnt changed in 500 yrs. (and, I was in literacy volunteers, trying to help adults learn to read - there are 1000 site words out there that we use more than 80% thru our whole lifetime - if you make sure your child knows these words thats 80% of the battle for learning how to read well). Mostly, kids do what they see their parents doing - if you dont act scared of numbers, and read in the home that will help your kids more tha you can imagine.
Here's all anyone needs to do math: grasp the concept that the numbers we use are 0 thru 9, and then, how you can take those numbers and add them, and subtract them. That is all there is to math: 10 numbers, adding and subtracting. Division and multiplication are formulas to add and subtract faster. After that, once you learn the formula, the "tricks", the short cuts to that long list of adding and subtracting, well, you can do rocket science. After that its a matter of learning there are what I call recipes, or formulas (depending on what doesnt intimidate you!) that can manipulate those 0-9 numbers. Algebra, calc etc - once you grasp the idea of the symbols, the Xs, Ys, the numbers will always come down to 0 thru 9. The biggest block is always in your own head saying its too hard and you're to dumb to "get it".
The best gift a parent or grand can give their kids is teaching them their numbers 0-9 and not making them afraid to use them. A love for numbers, reading, and writing are just about as basic as it gets - after that its all gravy. Teaching your child that they can do anything they put their minds and hearts in after these basics are understood is a gift to them, and to the rest of us, really - they are our future even if we've never met any of them.
If I had not been afraid of math growing up I could have been a phsyicist and been quite happy about it. I hated math and got a A in a college level accounting course that was mandatory for me to take. It took 60 yrs for math to click in my head, like turning on a light.
We are producing a society so dumbed down we are importing engineers and math folks from overseas. Hubs retired as a Chemical PE and they were hard pressed to find a replacement; he worked with Egyptian, Indian, Polish, British and Italian engineers (not American!) who could barely speak English but were really good in math!
As for making change, with machines that think for you a person only needs to know how to push the right buttons in the right order - its impossibly sad to me when anyone cannot count out proper change to the penny. This is second grade work. How in the world can anyone get a job in this country when they cannot function at a second grade level! sharet
09-26-2011, 05:35 AM
#37
Super Member
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Coastal Georgia
Posts: 1,508
Originally Posted by ncredbird
Several years ago DH and I had a small yogurt shop. Employees were HS kids. I taught them to make change in the manner you describe and one of them asked me one time. Why bother? The cash register does it for you. I asked her how she was going to do her job if the register stopped working or the power went out. She replied that she would close the door and go home. Needless to say we hired a more enlightened employee. Ann in TN
My ten year old GD made that comment not to long ago when she asked me to use a calculator to add her math and I told her no. I asked her if the teacher allows them to use it in class to which she said no. So I asked her why should it be different with doing her homework to which she responded "all my friends use them and it's quicker" to which I replied "and I'll bet when it comes time for them to take a math test they will fail because they did not know how to add or subtract, or even mulitple using there brain."
I proceeded to teach her how to do it in her head without a calculator.
I remember growing up getting answers for a math problem by the time the teacher put it on the board. I was in about 3rd, 4th grade when the Catholic Nun who was teaching us how to add large groups of numbers and my always coming up with the answer in my head and having it by time she put her last number on board. It use to baffle her to no end.
Back when I went to school we learned reading, writing and arithmetic which comprised only adding, subtracting, mulitplication, and division.
Anyway she was good at putting these huge rows of numbers on the board sometimes as much as ten rows across and ten down. By the time she put the last number down I had written the answer on a piece of paper. She would ask after a few minutes who had the answer and of course I always raised my hand and some days she wished someone else did.
She did not do like teachers today do such as putting number across row by row. She would start to the right bottom of the board and put a number and work her way up than go back to botton and start over again. So as she was doing that I was counting those numbers going up and mark it down and carry mentally in my mind when she started the second row and went up. Hence by time she put the last number down I had the answer.
She pretty much did the same with subtraction that she put on board up to 5 numbers across. She would put the first number down and put the top one than move to the left and repeat so by time she put last two numbers down I had the answer.
Today teachers if they even put numbers down on board it's straight across row by row.
It's amazing to me how many work in retail as cashiers and who can't count change out unless a machine tells them to. But what do we expect when you have stores today such as fast food and even grocery stores that show pictures on keys for cashiers to punch for products and they never have to put in an amount.
09-26-2011, 05:47 AM
#38
Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: South Alabama
Posts: 711
My husband is a math teacher and he insists on the students showing him their written work step-by-step. Calculators or not, the work must be there. As a homeschooling mom, my kid's learned to count change the old fashioned way as part of our math. Their brains need the exercise!!!!!
09-26-2011, 06:29 AM
#39
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Arvada, CO
Posts: 456
Several years ago I bought 2 cookies at a stand and gave the guy $5.00 for a 2.37 transaction. The cash register was broken and this poor guy was clueless what to do. He stood at the register and mumbled for a few seconds, went in the back to see if somebody there could help him and then tried to figure it out with pencil and paper. I finally had to help him figure out what change to give me back. Had the same thing happen at the grocery store a couple of years ago. I cashier part time and always count the change back the old fashioned way. I alwasy get comments about it...its a lost art.
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