I'm afraid....I'm very afraid

I know when folks get older they tend to look to the younger generation and think...."Holy Cow, what's to become of us...this new generation is: nuts, crazy, lazy, inefficient, slow, unthinking, selfish, etc...". I swear to God I thought I, being an educated, enlightened person, would not be one to look around and say things about the younger folks, but believe me, was I wrong.



Point in case:



Does anyone under 30 know how to make change without the use of a cash register??? I think not.



Whatever happened to "playing store" as a kid and learning how to count back the change?

There's a chain letter going around the Internet about someone going to Mickey D's. It goes something like this"

My daughter and I went through the McDonald's take-out window and I gave the clerk a $5 bill. Our total was $4.25, so I also handed her a quarter. She said, "You gave me too much money." I said,"Yes I know, but this way you can just give me a dollar bill back." She sighed and went to get the manager who asked me to repeat my request. I did so, and he handed me back the quarter, and said "We're sorry but we can not do that kind of thing." The clerk then proceeded to give me back $1 and 75 cents in change.

Now, maybe you think this is funny, and it is, but it's a pretty sad state of affairs as well.

I thought, "well, it's on the Internet and how true can that be?...I know some times we all get ruffled at times and make mistakes. Probably that's some kind of urban legend stuff, rearing it's head again. I really didn't think too much about it until last weekend.

My husband and I went to a local farm stand to buy some apples. The woman in front of me decided to buy a bag of apples ( now, this is the God's truth....I swear...I should be stricken down with a horrible death if I'm lying.....). She proceeded go to the counter and asked the cashier ( a man about 25) if he could tell her how much the apples were by the pound. The bag was clearly written that it contained 10 pounds. The price for the 10 pounds was $6.95. To me it was pretty obvious the price per pound was .69 cents. (.69 X10= 6.90 , OK so .69 and a half cents). The guy looked at her as though she asked him to solve a world crisis....He stammered, "Well, I have to take the bag to the scale over in the other part of the store and it will tell me, come this way..." . They both marched to the other side of the store where he proceeded to place the bag on the scale, plug the scale into the socket (apparently it was an "electronic device") wait for it to warm up(what the Hell....warm up?? give me a break!). I finally walked over and said, " The price per pound is approximately .69 cents. " They both looked at me as I explained how to divide $6.95 by 10 to solve their complicated mathematics problem....

The woman buying the apples said, " I was an English major in college. Math was never my thing". The guy behind the counter said, " Oh, I'm in graduate school, for EDUCATION(!!!) I was never a good math student"

We're all in freaking trouble!!! We better start learning, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, Pakistani, forget the Spanish....


Be afraid....be very afraid