I'm a genius.

I'm pretty sure I could work anywhere and be better at it than most people I come in contact with. And by 'anywhere' I mean retail and fast food.

I continue to be amazed at how dumb people are at the most simple things. The one that always gets me is when my total is like $12.17 and I pay $20.17. Why does exact change confuse so many?? Especially when they can just type it in their computer and see what to give back to me. It gets worse if its like $6.31 and I pay $11.31. Or even better, if its $6.31 and I pay $12.01. I don't want pennies and I don't want singles! But it's never that simple. If I had a dollar for every time a cashier messed up on my plan to get simple change, I'd have A LOT of singles.

Something happened a few days ago. I was at Jo-Anns. They had little wooden toys for $1.00 each. Way cute. They had a 60% off sign on them. Paul was with me and told me to get one of each for that price. So we put 7 in the cart. At check out they rang up at $1.00. I took the cashier to the bin and showed her the sign. She called a manager on her walkie talkie and it turns out the sign was in the wrong place. I was going to put a few back because we only got them all because we thought they were 40 cents each. Paul said, "No just get em all, they're only a buck." Right then the manager came up and the cashier handed her the 60% off sign and said, "It was on these." The manager said, (to me, and somewhat in a tone like the sign being in the wrong place was all my fault) "Oh yeah, that's not right. Those are only a dollar each! If they were 60% off they'd only be like 20 cents!" ...So many mean and sarcastic things came to my head at that moment that if I'd opened my mouth, my head would have probably exploded. It got worse when the cashier laughed and said to the manager, "I know!" (...Really cashier? You know? You know that 60% of a dollar is 20 cents??...) But, I just bit my tongue, paid full price for all 7, and left.

I've worked very little retail and no fast food in my life so I don't know how it works everywhere. But shouldn't a simple math test be a requirement in the interview process? Especially for management.