Red and Blue make Purple

agoodcartoon

sadly, a person making minimum wage in america would be baffled by seeing a bill larger than a $5 or $1. a good cartoon.

almightybob

written by someone that’s never been to or worked in retail

dicklessturdpusher

“you deserve poverty for giving me poor customer service”

v10l3n7

I hope the person who made that cartoon dies a painful death.

and furthermore I’ll work circles around you, dickhead.

oh ps. what kind of name is Rob Smith Jr?????

svidrigailovskaya

“*this is a true story”

somehow i highly doubt it.

faethebunny

As someone who has done a lot in retail; this is literally impossible. The damn cash register tells you what change to give. The artist definitely pulled this one out of their ass

cheskamouse

Ass, brain, whats the difference?

ohgodhesloose

The best part that undermines the cartoonist’s intent is that, if she’s demanding $11/hour and the meal is $10.60, it means right now she can’t even afford to eat where she works with an hour’s pay.

cannibalcoalition

I don’t think people realize how mathematically-minded a lot of people in poverty are. I mean, advanced mathematics are a difficult subject for a lot of people, but I’ve seen some people working for 7.25 an hour manage to add large sums up in their head and come out correct. A person making minimum wage knows the exact amount of money they are making per shift and can factor in what is being taken out in taxes. In particularly mind-numbing jobs, a lot of them try to calculate just how much they’re making per minute to do a repetitive and boring task. A person making minimum wage thinks: if at the end of my shift my average sum will be $46, then that will pay off the electric bill for the month, and tomorrow’s wages will pay off the water bill, and the next two week’s wages will go to rent.

Minimum wage workers mentally balance their checkbooks because every cent counts.

So if the purpose of this comic was to make some commentary about how people who are poor deserve to be poor because they are uneducated, then it was poorly executed. If it is, as it says in the corner, based on a true story, then I’m betting that the cashier was unused to giving exact change and was taken by surprise. It may also have been her first day on the register. Or her register could have had an error, because certain registers lock up if something goes wrong.

Basically, this comic is an unreliable account.

achangingaltar

I was never taught how to do this.
My parents didn’t want me walking around with cash on me at school, so I had a debit card with a really low limit on it to buy lunch when I needed to in high school. I never learned the “pay extra to get round change” thing until I had worked at a cash. I cannot lie; it never bothered me if the person told me they were doing it and I could enter that into the till and have the register tell me “give this much back”, but when they would tack it on after everything was punched in, it took me a while to be able to do it properly without panicking. Sometimes I had to get someone else to make sure I was giving them the right change (I’m terrible at mental math, and would blame myself to buy some time “Oh, I just don’t want to accidentally miscalculate and short-change you! Just a sec! Silly me!”)

And for those of you watching this scene go down from the outside and judging the cashier; I’m going to assume you’ve never been a cashier, or that you’ve been very lucky as a chaser and were never conned by a short-chang artist.

See, it might just look like the cashier is panicking and calling for the manager because “Hurr-durr what is math?! Do you want fries with that?”… but I promise you that there are some slick mother fuckers out there who do this to cashiers specifically to steal from them, and we know it. So, we call for backup. These short-changers wait until the register has calculated everything and at the last minute say “Oh, here’s $20.60!” and as you work out the difference (because now you’ve got a handful of odd change based on what they’d given you before, and the new “rounded” change isn’t always as obvious as $10, sometimes it is just to cut out three pennies), they’ll start rushing you through calculations. Then they’ll say “never mind, I’ll give you this instead!” and now you’ve got money in your hands, on the counter, in the till, all while they’re telling you new numbers and also asking if you can break their other $20… and it keeps going until they manage to trick you into handing them $10 extra while the people behind them are giving you the stink eye for not knowing how to give change.

In the end, that $10 comes out of your pay in a lot of places (even though large companies are insured for obscene amounts of money going ‘missing’ like that, but whatever). And $10 might not seem like much, but these con-artists don’t just hit up convenience stores and McDonalds. They also go to electronics stores (where people aren’t used to dealing in cash to begin with because everything is $50 minimum), or high end clothing and department stores where they can sneak $60-$150, at least, out of a cashier without anyone knowing until the end of the day.

So if you see something like this, or if it is happening to you, remember that these cashiers are working minimum wage, working 10 or 11 hour shifts with little or no breaks, with customers and corporations breathing down their necks. They might be a bit slow sometimes because they’re new, because they’re tired, or maybe even because they aren’t that intelligent. They might be trying to stop a con artist from stealing from them. They might be trying to make sure they’re not accidentally short-changing you! But who cares; slow your roll.

we-all-share-one-moon

Reblogging for that last comment, some man totally got $100 out of me by doing that. Kept handing me more money & asking for change, if I had followed my gut & called my manager over for help, he wouldn’t have made $100 off McDonalds. I’m not stupid. He was a scammer & he knew what he was doing & I unfortunately had no idea what he was doing. Also, fuck whoever made this comic. First of all, shits totally unrealistic. Most of us understand this unless we’re new & it CAN be confusing when you’re focusing on getting the right change out & someone’s like oh here’s the 60 cents so I get a 5 back or whatever. Second, even if a person had trouble with math, that means they don’t deserve to make enough money to survive & live on? Because you think (& you’re probably wrong & in reality just a stuck up asshole) they are stupid for some stupid, petty reason, they deserve to live in poverty? If you feel that way, you are literally sick. You have your head so far up your own ass you’re prob gonna get lost in there. Scumbag.

vulgarweed

I remember a version of this from 25-30 years ago - someone would keep thrusting bills and you and demanding change faster than they knew your register could work. The more computerized registers get, the easier it is for scammers - they know you can’t refund unless you have a manager key, and they know cashiers are reluctant to call a manager for fear of getting blamed (that’s what happens in a society where the government deliberately busts unions and holds down’ workers’ wages artificially, hello!). The cashiers also know that money that comes up short at the end of the night will come out of their pay, whether it was their fault or not.

I also might want to suggest to the Galtoriffic wannabes making and endorsing this cartoon - there actually is, or once was, an opportunity for every child to have at least a shot at learning basic arithmetic. It’s called the Public School System. You might have heard of it. You might even have gone there. You and your right-wing ilk vote to defund it at every opportunity.

elihearts

oh, and btw…corporate welfare is totally a thing.

i.e. enormous corporations get away with paying their workers a poverty wage because they know they can rely on the government to provide the rest of their employees’ basic needs (food stamps, health care, etc.). I work in eligibility, and I see this ALL THE TIME…clients who work two or three jobs at minimum wage (which is approx. $8.70/hr in CT) who still need food stamps and family cash assistance. guess where that money comes from? yep, YOUR TAXES. so if you oppose a “nanny state” or a “welfare state” or whatever derogatory term you prefer for a society that provides for those of its citizens in need…you should SUPPORT a living minimum wage.

just sayin.

badscienceshenanigans

Yeah. My fav is when exploitative employers bitch about “minimum wage” being an “unfunded mandate,” eg “A thing you want us to do but aren’t going to pay us to do by increasing taxes on everyone else, boohoo following laws is hard.” HAHAHA.

I’m not stupid. I know I’m going to have to pick up the bill for service employees one way or the other. How about I… gasp… do that by paying for the time of service employees I’m actually using the services of? A market-based solution. How ‘bout that.

And considering that the alternative to a minimum wage is paperwork-intensive government benefit systems (which conservatives are always quick to remind us are “prone to fraud”), a minimum wage is actually one of the most pro-market/invisible-hand-friendly solutions. Frickin’ The Economist— the giantest neo-liberal tootbag of all newspapers— thinks so. Ugh. Stop. Just stop.

fabulousanima

This exact situation just happened to me yesterday as a customer. I’ve been on both sides of it, so I was happy to be patient while my cashier worked it out. Rarely is it something so easy as $20.60 - $10.60; my total was $17.47 and I handed him a $20 and 47c.

Another point to consider is that cashiers are meant to work as quickly as possible, so that often when I get to my change, they’ve already rung it through as the first thing I handed them (in this case, a $20). I don’t blame the cashiers for that – they’re just operating on the speed they’re supposed to – but then it leads to these situations where I am trying to hand them a little bit of change, but their computer screen is telling them to give me $2.53. It absolutely can be confusing for them! They were on autopilot and I just ground them to a halt. I never have a problem taking a minute to help them get to the point that they understand and feel comfortable giving me more bills than they intended.

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

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