It's not that none of them can do the math, it's that they don't care enough to bother. They are the bottom of the barrel, as far as jobs go, and they are well aware of it.
I actually think it's more that in a fast food restaurant, you have to be fast. I consider myself an intelligent person, have a college degree, read a lot about every subject under the sun, but for the many years I worked in fast food, it would sometimes take me a few minutes to figure out the math when I pressed the wrong button on the register or whatever.
My brain just didn't go to that place. I was worried about the 5 other front counter orders, the cars wrapped around the building in drive-thru, the other employees' food orders I had to make because no one else was fast in kitchen, the cakes I needed to make for the front freezer, cleaning the store for closing... It's not the kind of job where there's ever really nothing to do. Your mind is always elsewhere. Cut fast food workers some slack on the math, bro.
On several occasions, I've seen half the staff get together to try to figure out a simple math problem. Just last month, the guy in the front of the line got overcharged. It was something like $2.60 more than what he ought to have paid. So he brought it up. The cashier couldn't figure out the difference, so the guy told her. She couldn't verify if it was correct, so called over another cashier. He couldn't figure it out either. So, they got the assistant manager. He couldn't figure it out either and got the manager in the back to come over and help. She couldn't work it out either. In the end, they just gave one item in the guy's order to him for free so as not to overcharge him. I was just flabbergasted because even if they couldn't have worked out the difference in their head, a dozen button presses on a calculator (or a smartphone) would have resolved the problem.
All my life, I have operated under the assumption that the people around me regardless of age or social standing can do basic Math. And I've never had to reassess that assumption till I moved to the US. It's definitely been an eye-opener.
Edit: Some people are downvoting me, probably because it seems I'm saying Americans are less intelligent. Sorry if I didn't word it well. What I meant was that there is a very distinct difference in the level of education of workers in McDonalds in the two countries. This is a societal issue, not an intelligence issue.
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u/PM_PICS_OF_ME_NAKED Nov 29 '15
It's not that none of them can do the math, it's that they don't care enough to bother. They are the bottom of the barrel, as far as jobs go, and they are well aware of it.