Change

It was a fancy place.  A hotel.  "That'll be $2.18, sir".

I gave him 2 one dollar bills and a quarter and 3 pennies.  When I was younger we used to do stuff like that all the time.  We thought it showed our coolness; our smarts.  And besides, it kept us from having too many pennies lying around.  My point is that it was common to do that.  Everyone knew how to do that. 

This guy. 
This twenty-something 21st century person.  This drained brain.  Looked at the money in his hand and then he looked at me and then he looked at the cash register.  Then he looked at me.  He said, with a condescending at-the-old-man look,  "It was only $2.18 sir, and you gave me $2.28".  He attempted to hand the money back.

I said "Why don't you just give me a dime".

He did.  It wasn't like, "Oh, I see".  No, he just blankly handed me the dime.  He didn't think.  He let me think for him.

This is not uncommon anymore.  It's systemic.  Computers have taken their brains.  There is no reason anymore.  There is no actual cranial work in the brains of young people anymore.  They're doing the same thing with their brains (Nothing.  Sitting.  Staring.  Reacting.)  As they are doing with their poorly developed bodies.   It's a disgrace. 

Haven't you been to the store and seen some kid clerk stop short and just stare?  Don't they get totally confused when anything happens that requires them to think about what to do?  Don't they just get so flustered when they have to react to something that the computer isn't telling them? 

When I ran a Pizza Hut back in the last century the bosses sent us to seminars where we learned about quick change artists.  We learned that savvy people actually make a living moving money around and setting it aside in plain view while they slip a bit in their pockets that doesn't really belong to them.  It happened to even the most experienced cashiers. 

Just think what a quick change artist could do today.  They could run all over the dead heads of twenty-somethings today.  And then, when the kid gets all confused, just tell them what to do.  "Just give me that ten, son.  Then we're even". 
"Oh.  No problem".

Hey wait a minute.  Uh.  My retirement.  Uh.  Hey. 
Hey kid.  You got change for a fifty?