UNDER CONSTRUCTION, AGAIN

After two years I am finally back to update and modernize this site. Ignore the construction.

Here is an interesting thing.

I went out to eat with my sweetie. After dinner we decided to tack on dessert. We flagged down our server and ordered while he was in the midst of handling several other tables. He took our bill to adjust it, and then returned it to the table.

We finished cheesecake and coffee, and were finally ready to leave. It had been a good meal at one of our favorite haunts. We paid up, and just as we were about to go through the door our server ran up. It went something like this:

"Wait! Wait. I forgot to add the desserts. I'm so sorry. I can see you are leaving, but could I ask you to let me adjust the bill?"

We both believe that you should not allow someone to cheat you on a bill, and therefore, you also should not cheat anyone else when the situation is reversed. "Sure. We are paid out already, but just add it up and subtract the difference."

Now we had a problem. The young lady at the cash register lost all the color from her face. "Subtract?" She was near to panic. "We don't really do that."

I smiled and tried to put her at ease. "Well, what do you want to do?"

"We add the money back onto your credit card and then redo the bill and then redo the credit card."

"We paid with cash."

"Don't you have a card?"

"We have cash."

She looked at the server and then to the host. "What do we do?"

My wife thought she could help. "Just get a new total and subtract what we already paid, and then we will pay the difference."

The young lady looked as though she thought we were trying to trick her. It was obvious that between the server, the host and the cashier, none of them knew how to set up a simple math problem.

My wife had already figured it out in her head. She said to the host, "it's twelve dollars and thirty five cents."

His look showed he had no idea whether that was right and no idea what to do about it. He looked to the cashier who was muttering to the cash register and looking at keys for a solution, "Ever hear of the cashless society?"

My wife pointed to the pad of paper and pen the host and cashier were using for keeping track of guests. Jane, party of six, Sam, party of two,... "Here, let me show you on your pad of paper."

The cashier placed her hand over the pad to protect against potential abuse of the valued resource. "That is just used for seating." She was still a little panicked, but starting to step into her roll. She had obviously not heard when my wife had worked out the total. She said, "I think it might be something like maybe twelve dollars or something like that." She didn't ask us to pay anything. It was just an offering into the group problem solving session.

Two parties were now lined up waiting to pay their bills. Three were waiting to be seated.

The host had gotten an unusual expression on his face when my wife had reached for the precious pad of paper. That expression, like one of a distant memory finally blossomed into epiphany. "A calculator."

The cashier looked up from the precious pad. She had anxiously been fingering the pen and paper, and looking back and forth between those who wanted to pay and leave, and those yet to be seated. "A calculator?" She might have said, "A torque wrench?" or "a sleigh and reindeer?" or anything else that didn't fit the conversation.

"All we need to do is find someone with a calculator."

"Who would have a calculator?" This appeared to the cashier as another insurmountable problem.

"Ask someone in the bar?" the server said and charged off to find someone. They didn't ask us if we had a cell phone. Each of us did, but if they wouldn't trust the answer we could get from a pad of paper or that was figured out in our heads, I suppose they may have decided any cell phone of ours would produce similarly tainted information.

The host tried to explain it to the cashier. "Not calculators, cell phones. Lots of cell phones also have calculators. We just find someone whose cell phone has a calculator and then we can use that." An open and shut case. The resolution was in sight!

The cashier was still nervous, but now it was part stage fright from looking at those others waiting for this Gordian knot to be smashed so that they could get on with their lives. "Should we do these other people first?" She looked at the others waiting and then to the host. The tone in her voice was unmistakable--she was holding us to blame for the delay!

The server rushed up with a cell phone. "It is twelve dollars and thirty-five cents." My wife already had the money sitting on the counter next to the cash register.

The cashier tried to excuse herself with an explanation when she saw the money already laid out. "We don't do math in our heads."

The host said under his breath to the server, "Yeah. We aren't old people."

A calculator was found, and the problem dealt with. The twelve dollars and thirty-five cents paid. We were old news. "May I help you?" the cashier intoned to the people behind us."

"Receipt?" I asked.

"Here." The server passed us a copy of the unadjusted receipt, thus saving the cashier from a new round of panic.

We left. I looked back at the crowd at the counter with slight regret. When the cashier asked the people behind us, "May I help you?" I was going to say, "I doubt it." It is probably better that we just left.

During the course of the evening we previously learned that the server and host were both going to the local college, and that the cashier was newly graduated from high school.

None of them could do basic second grade math without an electronic aid.

But, they can vote.