Re: GG and CD shop clerks

[Pablo Fagoaga <faguss@yahoo.com>]

Brad:
What worries me most about your tale is the fact that you, in a different
country (much more developed than Argentina -mine-). and with such a
different culture, perspective, etc, etc, are facing the very same gruesome
situations than me, in a third world country, with much more reasons
(poverty, poor diets, bad schools, etc) to suspect the justification for a
growing sensation of stunning stupidity.
Seems to be that what this days looks like "more intelligent" younth, is
just a bluff, a mirage created by the simple ability to give quick
responses, talk "like" adults, and so on. They behave as if they were full
mature men and women at 15, but suddenly they behave like a 10 year old when
they are 26.
Many people think new generations are coming smarter. I don't think so.
The thing is that boys are overexposed to a huge ammount of stimulation
sources. We marvel at an average 4 year old operating a computer, but
somehow I think we miss the main thing: his mind is totally EMPTY when it
comes to figure out an idea to apply his "operating ability".
And the worst thing is that while they show off their tricks, they don't
develope imagination, creativity, logical thinking, hence they don't
develope in the true and fulll menaing of the term.
Thiy can typewrite, but have no tale to type.
I think that in the end, we are breeding total morons.
This is as off-topic as it is a fascinating issue, don't you think??
I went to a large store, and taking advantage of a sale discount of 25% on
all items, I took CDs for, say, U$S 100. When I went to the register, I
could see the machine showed the total, and on the right it read "Disc.  U$S
25". What a wonderful world, I thought "this guy don't even have to figure
out the final price".
To my surprise, the clerk goes "Uhhh, wrong" and he gets a calculator and,
thanks to some alchemy I still didn't figure out, comes up with a U$S 43
discount. Worse...I think he took TWO minutes to come up with the number....

What to know what I did?? Same thing as Darwin would have done...let him
learn to survive.
I left silently and thought: "Little boy: next pay day, you'll find out how
useful good old school is to get your salary check with no discounts"
Regards,
Pablo

----- Mensaje original -----
De: Bradley P Lehman <bpl@UMICH.EDU>
Para: <F_MINOR@EMAIL.RUTGERS.EDU>
Enviado: Viernes 13 de Julio de 2001 11:29
Asunto: GG and CD shop clerks


> At 12:19 PM 7/13/01 +0000, Kate Clunies-Ross wrote:
>
> >And like Anne I also hjave encountered someone working in a record store
> >who asked "Glenn who?"   Yeah. Honest.  Her next question , after I
> >replied "Gould" as clearly as I could, was actually "How do you spell
> >that?" I am not sure how many  reasonable spelling  variations of  the
> >name Glenn Gould there are, but sometimes I despair of the human race
> >.....  ;-)
>
> Yep.  CD shop clerks who have no concept of good music, or of music
> history (of even the past 25 years of ANY kind of music).  They just sell
> "product."
>
> But I despair even more when I see the inability of CD shop clerks to
> understand sixth-grade arithmetic. They're being paid to do numbers
> accurately, but they have no concept of how numbers work. They have no
> mental sensors to catch it when something is obviously WAY OFF.
>
> Last week at a typical CD shop in a mall I bought three CDs from a sale
> display. The sign said everything with the yellow "SUPER BUY" sticker
> would have 75% discount at the register. A nice sale. The original prices
> of the items were 19.99, 9.99, and 9.99.
>
> The clerk, a guy about 25, rang them up and I noticed that each item was
> only 50% off at the register. I always watch the register because I know
> that retail clerks often don't know how to do arithmetic. They just do
> whatever the register says and they assume it's right. (If something is
> not in the computer, it doesn't exist.) I said, "These all have a yellow
> sticker and are supposed to be 75% off; the register rang only 50%."
>
> The clerk asked me to show where this sale was, and I pointed: directly in
> front of where we were, in plain sight. So he re-ran all three items and
> came up with a total of 15.00 plus tax. I said, "Sorry, that's still not
> right. That's only a little over 60% off, not 75%." He said, "No, it rang
> up 50% the first time and I took another 25% off of that, so 75%." I said,
> "No, it doesn't work that way."
>
> Confused, he then brought the next clerk into it, a gal about 25. We
> explained that it was supposed to be 75% off but the register originally
> rang only 50%. I pointed to the same sale display where this was
> advertised. She said, "OK, I guess we'll have to figure this out by hand.
> How much is it supposed to be?"
>
> I said helpfully, pointing at each item in turn, "Five bucks, 2.50, 2.50."
> She said, "No, you can't round them off like that, it has to be exact." I
> said, "That _is_ exact. I took each original price, divided by 4, and it's
> to the nearest penny." (I'm thinking, how hard IS this? Or couldn't they
> just take another 50% off the original 50% to get the 75%?)
>
> They obviously both didn't believe that this method of dividing by 4 is
> correct, and they stared at me as if there is nobody on this planet who
> can do arithmetic in his head.
>
> So they took fully two minutes figuring something on paper, privately.
> They then ran each item through the register again, and this time the
> prices came up 4.00, 1.40, 1.40. The total was just over 7.00 with the
> tax.
>
> I started to say a third time, "No, that still isn't right, now it's 3.00
> too low...." but before I said it aloud I thought, "Hang it, they're never
> going to get it right, or if they do by some chance get it right they
> won't believe me that it's right.  I'll just pay this and shut up now." I
> paid, I said, "Sorry I had to make an argument," and I left.
>
> What should I have said? "Sorry you both missed school the year they
> taught percents and problem-solving?" I can understand that some people
> just don't get math. That's OK. But these people were professionals.
> Whatever happened to thinking outside the computer?
>
> I looked at the sales slip later. Evidently they rolled it back to the
> original 50% off 9.99, 4.99, 4.99 and then manually took off 5.99, 3.59,
> 3.59. Decent idea, wrong execution. Staring at it now I still can't figure
> out how they came up with those particular numbers. Their numbers aren't
> proportionate to one another. Anyone?
>
> More importantly, what thought processes go through their minds?  There
> has to be SOME pattern to it, but what?  Yesterday's Dilbert seems
> apropos:
> http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20010712.html
>
>
> Bradley Lehman, Dayton VA
> home: http://i.am/bpl  or  http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl
> CD's: http://listen.to/bpl or http://www.mp3.com/bpl
>
> "Music must cause fire to flare up from the spirit - and not only sparks
> from the clavier...." - Alfred Cortot


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