This morning I was at the bakery. A woman being served asked the assistant if the pile of change in her was the right amount. ‘Yes’,  the assistant said looking at the register, ‘you gave me a 50 and your change is $35.30.’

This reminded me that every time I go into a shop and buy something for cash I get a little irritated with the customer service in these technological times.

I remember the very first time I served a customer in the fruit shop where I had my first job. I did exactly what the shop assistant I just described did this morning.

However, in my case, an old grey-haired customer saw me do this and gave me my first lesson in customer service. He said, ‘Don’t do it like that! Do this:

1) Take the customer’s money

2) Put it in the drawer

3) To work out the change start with the total of the bill and put coins into your hand smallest to largest each time bringing the amount in your hand closer to the Total.

4) When you get to a round 5 dollar amount do the same with the notes.

5) Hand the money back to the customer in the same order - coins then notes. You can count them or not, it doesn’t matter because the customer will know how much you’ve given them.

Since the invent of cash registers that do the sums for you, people have forgotten how to do the simple arithmetic and clearly show you the amount of change you have in your hand. And, as a bonus, if the coins are given back first then they don’t slip off the notes onto the ground!

This a good example of how a technology that should be more reliable and consistent in calculating the correct change, may not be in practice, because it removes an important error checking process. 

Maybe when I have [more] grey hairs I’ll give assistants, like the one this morning, a little lesson.