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I walked into a chain coffee store this morning (Dunkin Donuts) and ordered my usual coffee (but this was not my usual store). I asked for Half and Half in my coffee. The young lass behing the counter said: "Sir, we only have milk and cream." I paused for a moment before responding, in hopes that she might see the light, but it didn't happen. I actually had to explain that half & half is; half cream and half milk. To which she responded; (yep, wait for it ...) "OK, but we don't have that." More explaining of how to put half a measure of milk and half a measure of cream into my cup of coffee. I only hope I pass away before this lass and her friends take over running things, we truly seem to be headed towards an Idiotocracy. One saving grace is that I no longer have to listen to the nonsense that comes out of their mouths ... they seem to be rapidly losing the ability to speak and just sit all day with their face in a mobile device while twidling their thumbs on the screens.

I figure by the time I'm ready to check out, they will have de-evolved and already lost the ability to speak.

Oh Joe I have the same problem. I sometimes think I am speaking a foreign language when I order at places like Mc Donalds etc. Do I speak to fast - not sure as they never get it right - cheese burger, no pickle ( will that be a meal) - NO. Small fries (will that be in a meal ) NO ! and a small strawberry sundae, eat in thanks ( if you have a drink instead you can get a value meal ) NO THANKS ! (OK will that be eat in or take away ?) EAT IN !
My burger arrives half warm with pickle on it so I go back to get it changed as I can't be bothered to remove said pickle, by the time new correct burger arrives , fries are stone cold so back I go and get a new lot
Why is it that these store types all take it upon themselves to employ the dumbest of the dumb

I see her conundrum..., half milk, half cream...,no room left for coffee!

You need a cup made up of three halfs. They are much better for liquids, 2 halfs make a hole and your drink goes everywhere.

Moyboy wrote:Oh Joe I have the same problem. I sometimes think I am speaking a foreign language when I order at places like Mc Donalds etc. Do I speak to fast - not sure as they never get it right - cheese burger, no pickle ( will that be a meal) - NO. Small fries (will that be in a meal ) NO ! and a small strawberry sundae, eat in thanks ( if you have a drink instead you can get a value meal ) NO THANKS ! (OK will that be eat in or take away ?) EAT IN !
My burger arrives half warm with pickle on it so I go back to get it changed as I can't be bothered to remove said pickle, by the time new correct burger arrives , fries are stone cold so back I go and get a new lot
Why is it that these store types all take it upon themselves to employ the dumbest of the dumb

They don't even punch in numbers on the so called cash register, they just hit buttons with pictures of the food. The machine tells them how much change to make and some machines even auto dispense the coin.

When I was still a kid, I worked a real cash register, the kind where you made the change (and you figured it out yourself). If you screwed it up, you got it from the customer and the shop owner (so you rarely screwed it up more than once). Show me someone who can quickly make change today and you will find an unusual and extraordinary person.

True, they can't make change but they can text at light speed while driving daddy's car, smoking a cigarette and drinking a giant soda. Talk about multi-tasking!

To add to this subject. Not so long ago I was waiting in line at the cashiers desk of a C&A clothing shop in Amsterdam. The woman in front of me had bought a number of clothes, making a total of something like € 205,== on the cash register.

The woman paid in cash and gave the young girl cashier a small pile of bills. (In fact 8 bills of € 20 and one bill of € 50).
The girl started to count the bills but she could not establish how much she got. So she pressed a button of an intercom microphone and asked for a colleague to come and help her. That colleague arrived, counted the money and came to a total of € 210,--. Phew.........

Next the customer got her change. Being a rather extrovert person myself I made a sharp sarcastic remark, enough for the (stupid) girl to ask her colleague to take over while she was off to ...............I don't know where.
For me there is no excuse for someone who works at a cashiers desk and who is unable to add up.

Ecclesley wrote:Next the customer got her change. Being a rather extrovert person myself I made a sharp sarcastic remark, enough for the (stupid) girl to ask her colleague to take over while she was off to ...............I don't know where.

One can only hope it was back to school.

I can hear her now:
"I thought this job would be fun and I would get a discount on my favorite clothes ... who knew math and other stressful stuff would be involved." "The good thing is that I get like ten percent off my own clothes, that's like half off the price!"

I was paying the dinner bill for four people. Paying with a card I asked the cashier to add 20% to the total. You would just think I had asked for her first born child. She had to call a manager and the manager took out his cell phone and was going to the calculator app when I grabbed the bill and filled in the amount myself (all while muttering not so nice comments about the complete lack of ability to do anything without a smart phone).

When the power goes off or the smart phone goes dead, how will these people survive?

The filling station I used to run did a very good trade with the local school kids, and the lack of arithmetical ability was amazing. We had one particular kid who could not work out his change or how much he had left to spend so he used to choose an item, pay for it, get his change, count it, choose his next item and repeat the whole process over and over until he had no money left. One day he pointed at a particular jar of sweets and asked me 'How many of them can I get for 40p?' to which I replied 'I'm sure you can work it out, they're 2p each'. He placed his 40p on the counter and said 'Oh yeah, 40 of them please then'

The very first till I used had 4 columns for the numbers, two for the pounds (tens and units) and two for the pennies (tens and units) so if you sold £21.55 worth of goods you'd press 20,1,50,5 and it used to confuse some of the kids terribly. It was the best till ever because if there was a power cut it had a little handle you put in the side and wound round to work it. I realise this may sound very ancient to some of you, but it would have been around 1989!

Every weekend I stay in Amsterdam with my girlfriend who lives there. I used to work in Amsterdam for many years also. And through those years I noticed a certain upcoming (foremost) Amsterdam culture, which, with the advent of the cellphone and its subsequent smart phone technology created a ever growing dullness, a huge lack of consciousness and with the young female generation a horde of dumb tart hipsters surrounded by heterosexual homo boyfriends. These people are so bloody uninteresting.......................

Blame it on the schools - half the teachers now are as dumb as the kids. Keeps the masses in their place though !!!!!
Can't work it out - that's alright as we gave you spell checker, a calculator and lots of apps - what will happen when one goes wrong one day as surely it will.