<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Elite Nomore:
I dare you to go into a Walmart or a McDonald's and give the cashier $14.02 on a $13.77 sale and see if they know what to do without using the register to calculate what coins they need to give back to you. Pretty scary huh?</font>
I worked various retail jobs as a kid and quickly learned the trick to doing this in your head is to move the money over. i.e. in the example above, I'd move the $0.02 from the customer to the register, so $13.75 from $14 is obviously a quarter back in change. *shrug* Most people try and do the arithmetic in their head, but it's much easier if you "simplify" things a bit by applying a partial payment to the balance first.
I'm still surprised more people don't know how to count back change. What do they do when the power goes out or their register crashes? :-)