Shocking Moment

It was sort of a shocking moment, but it’s only a moment, a single incident with a single person, but —

Well, that’s the prelude.

I was buying a coffee drink. It’d been rung up. I was paying for the $4.75 drink with a ten.

The cashier said, “Oh, hang on. I put in that you were paying with a five. I need to figure out how much I owe you.”

I know from previous conversations that the cashier is nineteen years old and that she’s enrolled in our local college.

After a few seconds of allowing her to puzzle through it, I said, “I think it would be $5.25 back.”

She looked at me.

I said, “If I’d paid with a five, you would have given me a quarter back, right? But I paid with a ten, which is five dollars more, so you just give me five dollars more back. Does that make sense?”

She looked relieved. “Yes,” she said. “It does.”