Dumbing down schools for equity

[psionl0]

I was just about to mention a recent visit to McDonald's, the cost was $18.10, I gave the girl with antifreeze colored hair a twenty dollar bill and a dime. She said, "You gave me ten cents too much.", gave me my dime back, along with another ninety cents in change and a single dollar bill. I asked why she didn't just give me two dollar bills back. "That would throw my register off."

You could have asked her to change your coins for a dollar bill.

 

[psionl0]

Oh, and that thing with change happens to me alot, generally with a new cashier.

TBF the girls at the checkout are competent and efficient. They are usually on autopilot though so try to avoid doing something unexpected and throwing them off their game.

It might be sexist of me but I will never go to a checkout staffed by a boy. It is always their first day on the job (so they are slow and make lots of mistakes - taking even longer) and they never last longer than 1 day.

 

[Butter!]

Their fashions are ridiculous. Mine were cool. They listen to noise. I listened to great rock and roll...
I'm old enough to find myself thinking that way, but I've heard it all so much that I usually stop myself in a hurry!
Oh, and that thing with change happens to me alot, generally with a new cashier.

I know, I do it too haha. And like you, I try to catch myself, though I certainly do end up screaming at clouds from time to time.

But one area where I do defend the youth is the wild hair colors (which is why I got a little snippy in my comment to you, Mike! - sorry about that, bad day at Blackrock). In general, a lot of older people never seem to miss an opportunity to bitch about "kids with their blue hair / pink hair / whatever," and I really hate it. Like yeah, I probably wouldn't want to dye my own hair blue - as it would be work, and the hue wouldn't match my complexion - but I think blue hair looks really cool. I don't understand why it's fine and dandy for old ladies to put 50 different shades of "highlight" in their hair, but if someone selects an "unnatural" color, then they're terrible and offensive. (Also, how are bottle blond and mahogany and stuff like that "natural" colors anyway? They might be more based in naturally occurring hair shades than blue or pink, but no one thinks that's your natural hair color, Barbara. And no one really gives a ****.)

That being said, some kids do seem really dumb to me now, as well as completely unable to concentrate on anything. But my sample size is really small, and most of the kids I do know are parented by complete asses, so I'm assuming that fact skews the data.

 

[psionl0]

That being said, some kids do seem really dumb to me now, as well as completely unable to concentrate on anything. But my sample size is really small, and most of the kids I do know are parented by complete asses, so I'm assuming that fact skews the data.

That is not a generational thing. It has been observed throughout the ages.

You need to remember that as humans, we are not capable of making unbiased samples. We tend to notice things more when they confirm our beliefs. For example, when driving on the road, we don't notice the hundreds of cars that do nothing wrong. But we sure notice when that idiot cuts us off. Have that happen a few times on a road trip and you will quickly conclude that the drivers in this city are a bunch of ****s.

 

[Warp12]

In Denmark, most (big!) supermarkets give you the choice between manned and unmanned cash registers. If you choose unmanned where the lines tend to be shorter, you cannot use cash.

Interesting. In the USA the "self-checkout" machines can handle cash. I don't use cash, but I see a lot of people doing so.

On a different note, I am surprised to see so much focus on the "making change" aspect of this. I mean, there are academic standards that probably are more significant, and should be focused upon. I mean, how are the standards for literacy requirements being changed, for example?

 

[Meadmaker]

Interesting. In the USA the "self-checkout" machines can handle cash. I don't use cash, but I see a lot of people doing so.

On a different note, I am surprised to see so much focus on the "making change" aspect of this. I mean, there are academic standards that probably are more significant, and should be focused upon. I mean, how are the standards for literacy requirements being changed, for example?

Careful analysis of school performance and standards will never be able to compete for attention with "Danged kids these days can't even make change!"


But to answer your question, as best I can tell, the only standard under the new law is passing classes. If your teacher says it's worth a D, then you're good enough.

 

[Sideroxylon]

I remember cash.

 

[gnome]

The weird thing is that I've talked to high school teachers. There has been a huge emphasis on critical thinking in education. Seriously, lots of time spent specifically on that subject, with exercises and homework rewritten to emphasize it.

That might be the best news I've heard in a while. Is this widespread?

 

[Meadmaker]

That might be the best news I've heard in a while. Is this widespread?

I only had one teacher friend who I talked to about this a lot.

He says it is.

That's the good news. The bad news is I'm not sure it's working, and I'm not sure the lesson plans really get to the important part.

He taught chemistry. He said the way it applied to him was less emphasis spent on basic memorization, and more on interpretation of data. The samples he showed me involved spotting trends in data shown in graphs, and evaluating statements about that data for correctness.

 

[gnome]

No, it has happened to me. More than once. I've been the dumb young cashier that snooty old dads pull this move on. Then they'd try to give me a patronizing math lesson, loudly, on the spot. Sometimes, their wives would at least grant me the dignity of looking embarrassed to be with them.

My own father has come home / over bitching about these exact same types of interactions too, over the years. Use your ******* credit card, if it bothers you so much DAD.

The thing is, I actually don't think most cashiers freeze up when they're given weird change because they are dumb. It's just unexpected, and they're often not sure why someone is giving them an odd configuration. Plus, there's usually a big line they're expected to keep moving. I think this kind of transaction should be alluded to in training, so that new workers will recognize it.

It only took being humiliated 3 or 4 times for me to be on the lookout for dad change tricks. Now, I'm not a cashier anymore, but I am an accountant lol. So definitely not too bad at math. And I'm old enough to have been taught math normally, anyway.

But yes, every subsequent generation is ruining the world, everyone younger than me is bad, etc.

EDIT: To clarify that I agree with Butter! and my comments here are towards the general issue, not to contradict Butter

This has a chance of making me pause, were I cashier, and I have a fricking degree in mathematics and an MBA.

The reason isn't "inability to perform basic arithmetic" so much as when a task is familiar enough to be routine, breaking that routine takes an extra moment, and also risks introducing human error. The whole reason to have a repetitive procedure is to enable a person to do a task multiple times, efficiently, with very few errors. It's not an abandonment of sentience, it's taking the repetitive task to a lower level in the brain so that conscious thought can be dedicated instead to paying attention to the customers, to noticing whether a bagger is coming by to help, if the customer has extra items in their cart, or any number of things more suited to a cashier's concentration than manual subtraction.

And yes--a different way of thinking and situational awareness can make it not at all a challenge to compute, but it has no chance of becoming routine unless it comes up often--and as noted, when it's not routine is when people make mistakes.

There honestly is a solution to that stays routine--if a customer hands you an excess, enter the total amount given anyway and have the register compute the change amount. If the customer's done it right and the cashier enters exactly what they're given, the result should be whole dollars as the customer desires. If the customer was just being absent-minded and gave more than they needed, or tried to make it round out and didn't get it quite right, they still get every penny they're due and the register stays balanced.

Being able to do simple math in your head is useful in life. While at a cash register I argue trying to use it in a transaction may be a detriment--at best, a basic estimate would be helpful as a "sanity check" on the register's output to make sure you didn't fat-finger a number or something.

I might also ask people more familiar with the job--if trying to get clever with the hand over of cash is exactly the point at which most scamming is attempted. If my guess on that is correct, it's another reason the cashier may become nervous and prefer to stick with procedure.

 

[Warp12]

TBF the girls at the checkout are competent and efficient. They are usually on autopilot though so try to avoid doing something unexpected and throwing them off their game.

It might be sexist of me but I will never go to a checkout staffed by a boy. It is always their first day on the job (so they are slow and make lots of mistakes - taking even longer) and they never last longer than 1 day.

Yeah, I always go for the chicks, myself. I consider them more "competent".

 

[dann]

In general, a lot of older people never seem to miss an opportunity to bitch about "kids with their blue hair / pink hair / whatever," and I really hate it.

Some old people probably do: Blue Staid 'Dos: How Blue Became Old Ladies' Hair Color of Choice (Mental Floss, March 10, 2021)

 

[Thermal]

EDIT: To clarify that I agree with Butter! and my comments here are towards the general issue, not to contradict Butter

This has a chance of making me pause, were I cashier, and I have a fricking degree in mathematics and an MBA.

The reason isn't "inability to perform basic arithmetic" so much as when a task is familiar enough to be routine, breaking that routine takes an extra moment, and also risks introducing human error. The whole reason to have a repetitive procedure is to enable a person to do a task multiple times, efficiently, with very few errors. It's not an abandonment of sentience, it's taking the repetitive task to a lower level in the brain so that conscious thought can be dedicated instead to paying attention to the customers, to noticing whether a bagger is coming by to help, if the customer has extra items in their cart, or any number of things more suited to a cashier's concentration than manual subtraction.

And yes--a different way of thinking and situational awareness can make it not at all a challenge to compute, but it has no chance of becoming routine unless it comes up often--and as noted, when it's not routine is when people make mistakes.

There honestly is a solution to that stays routine--if a customer hands you an excess, enter the total amount given anyway and have the register compute the change amount. If the customer's done it right and the cashier enters exactly what they're given, the result should be whole dollars as the customer desires. If the customer was just being absent-minded and gave more than they needed, or tried to make it round out and didn't get it quite right, they still get every penny they're due and the register stays balanced.

Being able to do simple math in your head is useful in life. While at a cash register I argue trying to use it in a transaction may be a detriment--at best, a basic estimate would be helpful as a "sanity check" on the register's output to make sure you didn't fat-finger a number or something.

I might also ask people more familiar with the job--if trying to get clever with the hand over of cash is exactly the point at which most scamming is attempted. If my guess on that is correct, it's another reason the cashier may become nervous and prefer to stick with procedure.

Absolutely stunned that it took this long for someone else to realize this. There is no change-counting skill, or lost esoteric arts, or even math. The cashier merely enters the amount tendered, $2.01 for the $1.76 purchase, and the register reads $.25 change. That's it.

 

[Darat]

Absolutely stunned that it took this long for someone else to realize this. There is no change-counting skill, or lost esoteric arts, or even math. The cashier merely enters the amount tendered, $2.01 for the $1.76 purchase, and the register reads $.25 change. That's it.

Hmmm...

That's simply a result of bad training.

The McDonald's training is to check the money the customer hands you and to enter the exact money you were handed into the till. The reason is to use an old-fashioned phrase I really miss all about "time and motion" studies, she increased the interaction time by querying what you had handed her, which slows down the transaction rate, simply entering it into the till would have taken less time with the exact same result for you the customer. Plus of course it means there is one more negatively slanted story about the business out there.

 

[autumn1971]

The heavy reliance on standardized testing was one of the more controversial elements of the Bush era "No Child Left Behind" policy.

Critics of these tests often claim they are a waste of classroom time that could be used much more productively. The common complaint is that emphasizing standardized testing, especially when funding is tied to test results, creates a perverse incentive for schools to narrow their education only towards teaching students how to perform well on these tests.

Yup. Standardized testing is what, if anything, dumbed down curricula in a lot of states.

 

[Thermal]

Hmmm...

Yup. So where would math or change making skills come into play? I was quite adamantly assured that lost skills/thinking/knowledge of coins were the problem.

 

[gnome]

Hmmm...

Hey good catch, I would have given a shout out if I'd spotted that. Says it a little more concisely than I did.

 

[gnome]

Absolutely stunned that it took this long for someone else to realize this. There is no change-counting skill, or lost esoteric arts, or even math. The cashier merely enters the amount tendered, $2.01 for the $1.76 purchase, and the register reads $.25 change. That's it.

I wonder if the expectation was the cashier would ring up $2.00, disregard that the change says $0.24, and give a quarter back, knowing the register will still balance. While it's true that it will balance in that scenario, and it accurately reflects the net transaction, and it displays the quick mental flexibility and apparently high educational standards of the cashier, there's zero benefit to efficiency for the cashier to do that, and lots of room for the cashier to make an error or get hustled.

 

[Thermal]

I wonder if the expectation was the cashier would ring up $2.00, disregard that the change says $0.24, and give a quarter back, knowing the register will still balance.

I've seen cashier's do that many times. It saves them a couple keystrokes.

While it's true that it will balance in that scenario, and it accurately reflects the net transaction, and it displays the quick mental flexibility and apparently high educational standards of the cashier, there's zero benefit to efficiency for the cashier to do that, and lots of room for the cashier to make an error or get hustled.

True, I've seen people play a fast shell game to burn the cashier by confusing them into giving more change back (I need to work in better neighborhoods).

In the situation I mentioned, the cashier actually stopped to argue/correct me instead of just entering the tendered funds into the register and having the machine work it out. Then the cashier's only thinking is to recognize that $0.25 is one coin of change and to not count out 25 pennies. It's the interjection of stopping to argue (on their part) that strikes me as oddly rigid.

 

[autumn1971]

I wonder if the expectation was the cashier would ring up $2.00, disregard that the change says $0.24, and give a quarter back, knowing the register will still balance. While it's true that it will balance in that scenario, and it accurately reflects the net transaction, and it displays the quick mental flexibility and apparently high educational standards of the cashier, there's zero benefit to efficiency for the cashier to do that, and lots of room for the cashier to make an error or get hustled.

You are incorrect. Counting (up or down depending on where you’re from) is much more efficient in time and also reduces errors from the extra step of entering the tendered amount.

Quicker and more accurate seem to me to validate the hour or so it takes a functional human to learn it.

ETA: the option of entering the tendered amount is still available if the cashier is confused or hung-over or whatever.
There is no scenario where being a good cashier is less efficient. At the very least it is exactly as efficient.

Plus, all customers are thieves and scam-artists, so **** them