Farmer H and I had our yearly appointment with our financial advisor on Wednesday. Kind of. Our ACTUAL financial advisor retired. So now our meeting is with his daughter, who took over his business. She's a smart cookie. I trust her with our electronic money. I saw on the big TV screen where she projected our accounts, that she had budgeted 45 minutes for our meeting. YAY! Her dad used to give us an hour. Another plus, FARMER H DOES NOT HAVE AS MUCH TO DISCUSS WITH HER!
Don't get me wrong. She has a pink gun, but they've talked about it before. She also shared some things about constructing her new house (I guess Daddy's business is profitable!), and some trim work she had designed for the office. For example, the wall where the big screen TV was mounted had a wooden thingy that hides the wires from the computer and TV. It looks like a line with up and down pointy parts. She says it the stock market logo. I can't do it justice in my description. She told the woodworker what she wanted, and it took him a couple months to get the right design.
Also, she said she'd been looking at houses online, for ideas she might want to include in her own house. She came across a story about new homeowners who were re-doing their closet, and found a DOOR in the floor, under the carpet. They got it open, and it had STAIRS to a room under the house, with 2-foot thick concrete walls, and a dehumidifier, and its own air and water supply.
"Oh, a PANIC ROOM!"
Farmer H didn't know what I was talking about. Financial Daughter also looks a bit confused.
"You know. Like the movie. For a while it was a thing. People putting in hidden PANIC ROOMS in case their house was invaded. So they could be safe."
Funny how Farmer H designed his own similar room, the similarities ending with thick concrete walls, a concrete ceiling, and a steel door. No ventilation or water. He sees his as more of a walk-in safe.
Anyhoo... Financial Daughter said that people online were going crazy about this hidden room, saying stuff like "creepy," and "serial killer," and why didn't the previous owner disclose the hidden room when selling the house. She figured since the seller had built himself a new house in the same town, he wouldn't reveal it, because he probably also put one in his new house, and why advertise that fact.
Anyhoo... we got to discussing how nobody can do a job right any more, except her wooden wire-hider builder guy. When I mentioned the making-change problem, she blew my mind.
"You know how Country Mart got bought out by the new store? Have you looked at the new registers they have now? When they punch in the amount you give them, THE SCREEN SHOWS PICTURES OF QUARTERS, NICKELS, DIMES, AND PENNIES, and HOW MANY OF EACH TO GIVE BACK!"
"No way! That's crazy! But they also have signs on the door that they wish you would pay with plastic, due to the COIN SHORTAGE!"
"Yeah. That's bull, too."
Every day I learn something. Some days, the information is more useful than others.
"the screen shows pictures of quarters, nickels, dimes and pennies and how many of each to give back"
ReplyDeleteREALLY?? our screens only ever showed the amount, like maybe $10.85 for which we would give as few coins as possible, so a $10 note, then a fifty cent, a twenty cent, a ten cent and a five cent. And we had to work that out in our heads. IT ISN'T HARD.
Unless the customer wanted it differently, like two $5s instead of a ten, and four twenty cent pieces, plus the five cents, then we would do that.
P.S. they wish you would pay with plastic so they don't have to make change because that requires maths.
ReplyDeleteRiver,
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen it myself, because I've been paying with plastic except that ONE TIME when they KEPT MY CHANGE! But I DO know that the store has new registers, and new card-scanners that do things in a different order than the old ones.
What I've noticed at Casey's, when paying cash, is that instead of a ten, they'll give me back two fives. Almost every time. That's weird. Like CASINO weird, where the machines don't give out tens or dimes. Supposedly because they only have a finite number of spaces to load with bills and coins. That shouldn't apply to Casey's, since they have a regular cash register drawer with enough spaces.
River 2,
I'm sure the young cashiers rejoice at the plastic policy! The older ones always know how to make change. Because WE learned it in school, instead of being babied, and taught a watered-down curriculum that lets them ESTIMATE math answers! Don't get me started! That Common Core curriculum was designed to turn out dummies! Math is finite. Right or wrong. No room to creatively interpret the answer!
It's scary if that's true, that the cashiers need pictures of coins to make change. What next? A math tutor, watching them from a remote location and coaching them, telling them, "No, you need two of those little silver coins with the torch on one side... the stick that's on fire"?
ReplyDeleteGoodness gracious.
(Sorry I've been AWOL. It was report card and parent teacher conference week.)
Sioux,
ReplyDeleteWith electric shocks if they give back too much change! And a treat dispenser if they give back too little!
I wondered if maybe you had finally been apprehended for your shenanigans at the Gas Station Chicken Store. The wheels of justice move slowly.
Estimate math answers?????
ReplyDeleteESTIMATE??
What is wrong with your country that this is allowed to happen?
They might as well start employing monkeys and pay them with bananas, because the new crop of kids will be unemployable.
River,
ReplyDeleteI think we've already reached that "unemployable" part. As Farmer H tells it, one of his friends said her daughter, a recent college graduate, got a good job in Florida, moved there, but then quit after a month. Her complaint was, "They expect me to go to work every day, and stay the whole day!"
The Pony was the last class in elementary school that was taught CURSIVE WRITING! Can you believe that? Those kids would think cursive was some elaborate code, like an untrained person trying to read shorthand! I do think they reinstated the teaching of cursive a few years later, but I'm not sure. I'm out of the loop now.
I could give you my opinion of how this was allowed to happen, but I try not to talk politics on my blogs...