Monday, April 19, 2010

5 + 3 = duh

i know math can be challenging. Really, i sucked at math back in my school days. My senior year of high school i had to write a two page paper about measuring the breadth of a river using nothing but a 6 foot piece of rope and the shadow of a tree and it was destined for failure from it's onset. But filling out a credit card slip shouldn't be the most challenging part of a person's day...

saturday i had one table determined to sit out on the patio despite it being a blustery 60 degree evening. It was an old couple, a teenager with Down's syndrome, and a little kid. Once they decided they couldn't take the cold anymore the old lady fished a credit card out of the depths of her purse to hand off to me. Later when i had time to bus the table i glanced at the tip written in (9.07) before sticking it in my server book. But i didn't notice the math...not til later when i went to enter the tip into the credit card machine. I couldn't decide who at the table had filled it out. The bill total was $54.93. The tip written in, clear as day: $9.07. They even wrote out the "carry the one" addition activity over top the numbers (i can just imagine the sweat beading on Whoever Did The Math's brow right now). The total shoulda been $64.00. Their total?

54.93
+ 9.07
------
57.00
oh well, at least they didn't write their phone number in the tip area like some male customers do.

2 comments:

  1. I hate it when that happens. Especially since we're officially supposed to enter whichever tip is more favorable for the customer. So in that case, the $2.07. But if they'd added it up to $66, I'm supposed to put in the $9.07.

    Fuck that noise. I put in the tip they wrote, as that's what they obviously intended. Their shoddy math skills aren't my problem.

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  2. strangely enough my current restaurant tends to decide these things in the server's favor--weird, i know! Ususally i don't mention math fuck ups to management, i just fix it myself. If they're too dumb to successfully fill out a credit slip, i doubt they're paying attention to the credit statement that comes in the mail.

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