I just came back from a quick trip to Walmart. I was looking for some buttons which I didn’t
find, but I picked up a couple of other items.
I could see that there were two employees at one of the check-out aisles where
there were no customers. That usually
means someone is being trained, but that was OK with me. I wasn’t in a hurry. Good thing!
My purchases came to $14.97, and I gave the young man a 20
dollar bill. Of course, I was able to
speedily determine that my change should be $5.03. I didn’t need the machine to tell me
that. The young trainee handed me a wad
of bills and a whole handful of change.
I said, “This isn’t right,” before I had even counted it. By the time the trainer had ripped off the
register tape and looked at it, I noticed that there was a $10 among the bills,
so I said, “You’ve given me too much!”
I handed back the 10 dollar bill. The trainer said to the trainee, you owed her
5-O-3. The trainee then began to remove 3
dimes from the till. It took
considerable time to straighten this all out.
At some point, I ended up with 4 singles, 3 quarters, one nickel and 2
pennies and the drawer was shut. The trainer couldn’t get it open. He had to go get a supervisor.
While the trainer was gone, I said to the young trainee, “You
need a math tutor.” I tried to say this kindly and sympathetically.
He replied, “I took 8th grade math, but I didn’t do
well. My father punished me for my bad
grades, and my mother said it was the school’s fault.”
Eventually, I got the right amount of change, but I felt so
sad. This poor young fellow probably
really needs a job. He is probably OK as
long as someone uses a credit or debit card, but he is totally lost if someone
uses cash. This is basic math, but he
didn’t even really need it. The register
itself said my change should be $5.03.
As someone who has tutored math, I am wondering, should I be
trying to help someone like this? How would I go about it? It makes me so sad to see someone without
such a basic skill.
No comments:
Post a Comment