Enough Americans.
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[quote=“rob”]
nakedly opinionated[/quote]
Ohhhhhh you don’t want to know
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This. It’s been a while since I’ve worked a register, but I remember it as being mind-numbingly repetitive work that did not reward thinking. Just make sure the amount you’re given matches the amount you enter and let the machine do the rest. My drawer was almost always exactly even at the end of the night.
At my very first job I sometimes worked from just a cash box, and I started out doing subtraction in my head. I didn’t think this was difficult, but I do remember my mind being slightly blown when I was shown how to “count up” (i.e. start with the amount due and add coins/dollars until you reach the amount given) to make change. Although I don’t recall how it was supposed to work if you didn’t give me either whole dollars or exact change. Giving me $5.25 for a $1.25 total could have very well resulted in three ones and four quarters. 
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A pipe, elf ears and a coy grin?
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^ ^ ^
Even though I could (well, initially) do change in my head, the sheer number of transactions means I just couldn’t risk not letting the machine calculate change. Otherwise there is just too much chance having the drawer come up short at the end of the day - well, for me anyway.
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Oh jeez as I have stated here before. I was a math major and doing the proof of 1+1=2 I can do. The actual ARITHMETIC of adding/subtracting/multiplying etc in my head, I guarantee you I will screw that up most of the time, even with paper and pencil.
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It’s only from the years of teaching Calculus that i’m getting to be competent at arithmetic.
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Having been on the receiving end in a high volume coffee shop, there’s nothing worse than the smarty pants criticizing you as you try to remember the last 4 orders and deal with their payment nuances.
“Nobody taught you how to subtract? Ha ha ha ha!”
“Do you want whipped cream, you smug asshole?”
So yeah, I can make change but standing there and telling me that I’m not doing it your “right” way will guarantee I screw up where I was at and have to start all over. Also, in the back on my head I know that there are many change-making cons so I’m always a little wary of anybody telling me what I should give them back.
Rage not directed at you, @Melizmatic 
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I started out as an engineering major… The better academic adviser I had let it be known calculus classes were mostly about hammering in the algebra knowledge required for the actual work we needed to do. The fundamental theory of calculus is one that is still mostly in my head all these years later.
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I’m not generally someone who gambles, but I’d put reasonable money against the above coming to pass. We are in a post-reality future only 30%-ish of US citizens voted in favor of. (I may need to adjust my deadpool picks as I’m not sure Sanders will survive the stresses of the coming year. 
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Your quip about calculus is kinda true for me, but apply instead to differential equations. It took me a good number of years to realize that I’d been trained to do most basic math operations in my head. (Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.) “Difficult Equations” brought that traning home.
Sadly, this is also why I don’t like to play any card game involving only one deck. (I don’t mean to count cards, but it’s very difficult for me to subconsciously not do it.)
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I make silly arithmetic mistakes all the time, but rarely get theory wrong unless it’s something I flat out don’t know. Once I’ve learned something, I more or less have it down.
My calculus teacher in high school used to say that the calculus in calculus is easy, but the algebra in calculus is tough.
I was also an engineering major, and we actually do use differential equations quite a bit. All of the EE core courses are all about Fourier transforms and Laplace transforms, convolution, transfer functions, etc. It is hard to find a job in EE above the tech level where it’s not important to know at least a little DiffEq, although it’s usually not necessary to master it, and Partial DiffEq is more of a MechE thing.
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If I can lament anything from uni, it is that the easiest math class (for me) that I took ended up being the least useful to me IRL (look in’ at you, diff-e-q).
Algebra, geometry, trig and I are besties; differential equations was like a family reunion.
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Sure there is; not having a fucking job at all.
I could point out that I’m never snide or mean when I assist a clerk with subtracting the correct amount, I’m just usually in a hurry… but you already made a backhanded ‘mea culpa’ in your comment that your vehement little tirade isn’t “meant” to be taken as a personal attack… so I’ll just move on to my next point.
I’ve been on both ends of the equation as well; and unlike many retail workers I’ve encountered recently, I didn’t freak out when the cash register failed, because I am fortunate enough to have retained the basic math skills I learned as a kid.
But then again, it’s hard to retain what you never had; personally, I’m convinced that “Common Core” is an intentional effort to sabotage elementary education.
That is all.
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I thought that at first. If you approach it cold, it’s alien and contains vocabulary that makes you want to slam the Department of Education’s head into the Washington Monument base. I figured out last year (1st grade) what they were really going for, and it’s the subconscious card counting I reference above. Not that they’re trying to train grifters, but that they’re trying to get basic math operations to function in our kids in the subconscious level. You would know better than I what happens in Trig these days, though. YMMV?
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Yes, they are trying to train kids in math in ways that are actually in line with how the brain processes information rather than through rote memorization. But I agree that the way they have communicated Common Core, and others have done, often sucks. The idea, though, has merits.
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I get what they claim the goal is; and I agree with the other poster that the methodology being used to communicate the idea sucks ass.
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For me, Linear Algebra and DiffEq have been the most useful math subjects, and Linear Algebra is probably more important than DiffEq but much less fun. I have found no use for Partial DiffEq and Finite Element Analysis, but I’m an EE and not a MechE. I have had a lot of fun with my graduate math classes, but only a little bit of practical application here or there.
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I loved differential equations; I hated matrix algebra,
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If math wasn’t one of my BBF’s and I didn’t read every last “family note” that came in the homework folder, I’d totally be in your boat. Few families have the luxury of having even one overly-numerate parent at hand, and I’m enough of a math geek to absorb the common core methods to sharpen my own skills, even as I sometimes teach my son the “easier” way kids in the 70’s and 80’s were taught (maybe even into the 90’s, but those brats got to use calculators in class Old Person Rant: I didn’t get to use a calculator, not even a cheap-ass Casio, until my last uni-level math class - ie: differential equations, when a calculator did you little good beyond solving radioactive half-life problems). For what it’s worth, From what I gather, Common Core is the “old math” as early to mid-70’s X-era understand it.
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