LDB415 Loc: Houston south suburb

Schools do not teach anymore. They indoctrinate. In another generation students won't be taught anything at all during their 12 years, nothing, nada, zilch. This is the result. Those may have been made up for humor value but you can be certain they are real somewhere and probably many many somewheres.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I had a farm stand. I hired a woman I knew as a cashier. She was a mathematician and would never enter the amount tendered into the register, preferring to use her brain. It was never a problem until a customer asked whether she gave her a ten or a twenty? If she had used the register there would have been a printed record on the tape.

Stephan G

In most jurisdictions, it is referred to as "Crime (Theft) by Conversion". It would be the same as to putting a wrong tag on the product.

You also have to consider what is morally right. You knew that the bill charge was incorrect. You took advantage of her ignorance and/or inability. I would have asked for her supervisor. Cashiers, as a rule, do not have the authority to adjust prices. Discounts are based on coupons. Also, you admit that she did not register all of the items you were buying.

In many stores, it is the policy to prosecute when it is above a certain amount ,many are $500.00 to start. It is a statute that comes to play, making it a criminal charge.

The person behind you was wrong to justify the error with their excuse. That person is also a witness.

And you would have admitted to the "error" if they "forced me to pay whatever the cost should have been if the cashier had rung it up correctly" ? (One reason for the Miranda reminding you that you do not have to make self-incriminating statements to the arresting officers. The "right to remain silent".)

As it stands, you are probably safe in regards to time that the store has to make the charge. It largely depends on the statutes of limitations in the various jurisdictions.

My point is to remind people of the jeopardy such situations do present. It is not something to make light of.

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

That's nonsense!! Maybe true in your local, but not where I live. My grandkids are very well educated and not indoctrinated!
Mark

Stephan G

Most of my math teachers would say. "Yes, that is the correct answer. But you failed to show me how you got it!" Many of my quizzes and tests in high school were given demerits for lack of justification for the answer given.

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

I taught mathematics for 39 years. My students always had to show "their work" that led to the answer.
Mark

Dannj

Replying to your summary comment:

I think what many of today’s students are lacking is a sense of what numbers mean, an ability to recognize what doesn’t make sense given a particular set of numbers or calculations. They’ve learned to depend on the information their various tools provide without questioning and it started when portable calculators became popular.
When I was in grad school I was taking a stat class and we were doing a problem that required adding up several columns numbers. To speed things up he asked 4 or 5 students to add a column each and he wrote the totals on the board. He started to move on to the next step when I raised my hand and told hill one of the numbers was wrong. He looked at the column for a bit and said “you’re right, it’s wrong”. He asked the student to run it again and the student got very defensive arguing that he’d used his calculator so it must be right. The professor looked at me as if to say “Well?…”
I said “I don’t know what the right answer is but you added a column of even numbers and got an odd number for an answer. That can’t be right.” The professor of course knew what was wrong with the answer as soon as I pointed it out. He reminded the class of the old “garbage in, garbage out” adage. Sure, technology is great but it will only do what we tell it to do.

phlash46 Loc: Westchester County, New York

Damn! I've met every one of them!

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

My pleasure, Dodie!!
Mark

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

Good anecdote! Point taken!
Mark

MrMophoto Loc: Rhode Island "The biggest little"

Most of this thread is too long to read, as a former teacher, I was fond of telling my classes "there are only two things in this world that are limitless, one is human imagination, and the other is human stupidity"

Dannj

At the time my focus was not on the cashier’s ignorance or inability, it was her attitude. She was surly and rude and when I questioned her on the cost. Her answer to me had an “in your face” tone to it. I had the feeling that if I did ask for a manager she might have lost her job…other customers in the area were very aware of what was going on. Agreed, I had a legal and moral obligation to pay the correct price. Maybe I also had the moral obligation to point out her unacceptable behavior to the employer.

Verryl

As to the McDonald's: Years ago I had a franchise, and it was a strict policy not to make change for anyone who just wanted to break a large bill without purchasing anything. The McD's corporation taught that to avoid "fast change" artists taking advantage of the teen window-men. (It was in the early 1970's before girls were hired.) One time a young man got taken for $20. I discovered his register was short about that amount--within a few cents. He described how this con man did it. After he did, I said, "I can see how we got taken for $10, but you were short $20."

"Oh!" he said. "I know I did it right, because I did it twice for him!"

I later owned a large restaurant with a older lady cashier who worked all 8 hours we were open. A fast change artist tried to pay with a $20 bill, but when she described the action of the guy, she said, "I thought it was funny, and he was a fast talker, and he then asked for a bigger bill back for some of her change and another smaller bill from his wallet. He was in a hurry to pick up the money, so I bent over the counter and covered all the bills up, and said, 'Hold it,'" and physically leaned over the counter to cover all the money she had counted out. Then he said, "OK, and I gave him his proper change, and he left."

She had encountered the same con. See it done at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci7IhwiiiDw

So, police and cashier training pros suggest not making change at all, as did the McDonald's Corp when they trained me just before I took over my franchise.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

😁

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Before I retired in June 2007 I had been working with some younger teachers who were that bad.

I had students who changed schedules and teachers who came to me to get me to tell their new teacher that what I had taught them was correct. And some of the teachers argued with me about it and I had to actually show them the source material.

And some of those teachers asked me to "translate" notes I sent them in cursive. They didn't know cursive. I had "Fun Lessons" I would throw in for relief from time to time - one of them was "cursive" and at the 10th & 11th grade level I had students who had never been exposed to cursive. "That is that stuff my grandparents use when they don't want us to know what they are writing." I also had a lesson on Roman Numerals since some textbooks use(d) them for things that are not strictly part of the subject matter.