As for not having the ability to count change or understand having a few cents extra so you will receive less change just does not bother me anymore . I just put the change in a jar at home and when I go to the credit union I just take there.
I learned to count change when we sold sweet corn door to door out of our coaster wagon. Itâs really very simple and no computer or even calculator required (they didnât have computers or even calculators then). If itâs $2.59 and they hand you a five, its one penney to get to 2.60, then a dime and a nickel to get you to 2.75, then a quarter to get you to 3.00, then two dollars to get you to 5. Works for any amount. Of course when the bill is 8.07, and I give them a ten and a dime to avoid a lot of change, they tend to hesitate a little checking the buttons on the cash register.
I always thought these were cool:
Very big with the ice cream truck.
I think the ability to count change has been severely diminished by sales tax. You can count up your coins to see if you can buy a candy bar for $.75, but that does no good, as you do not know what it is going to cost after tax.
I used one of those things when I collected money once each week from my paper route customers.
I havenât seen one in⌠years!
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My earlier comment that one contributor to peopleâs inability to stand up for their warranty rights was poor reading comprehension due to the poor state of our primary and secondary educational systems extends also to basic arithmetic. I would not have been allowed to graduate from the sixth grade if my arithmetic skills were as poor as many high school graduates/college applicants whose assessments Iâve reviewed.
IMHO the lack of many peopleâs ability to do basic arithmetic, like make change, comes from the same root cause as their inability to understand their ownerâs manuals and their warranties; the derelict state of our educational systems. Too much political correctness, too little basic skills and knowledge.
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I think one had to apply mathematics to understand mathematics. I was invited to a conference on stateeide testing about 33 years ago that was held at the University of Michigan. I have no idea why I was sent. I was just told to go to this conference, assigned a car from my institutionâs fleet and was on my way. One session that I did attend was conducted by an attorney on teaching children to understand mathematics. His theory was that to understand mathematics, one had to translate from English to mathematical symbols, manipulate the symbols, then translate the result back to English. He claimed the way to accomplish this was to have children work a lot of word problems.
I proposed this to one of my colleagues who taught mathematics education courses. She claimed that word problems were outdated. She asked me how meaningful a problem that begins âJohnny had 50¢ to spend at the candy store. Gumdrops cost 5¢ an ounce and chocolate covered raisins cost 10¢ an ounce. Johnny wants a mix with twice as many gumdrops as chocolate covered raisins. How many ounces of each should he purchase?â. Her claim was that that children today havenât seen a candy store, the prices werenât meaningful and the problem wasnât relevant to todayâs children. I maintained that it was the problem solving process that was important, but I modified the problem to be relevant to a child today. My modified version went like this: âCrudney knocks over a little old lady that just cashed her social security check and now has $200 to spend on the street. Now a bag of 10 grams of grass goes for $5 and a 5 grams of coke sells for $20. Crudney wants a mixture that has twice as much grass as coke . .â
Now the problem is ârelevantâ. I maintain that itâs the process of converting the English to mathematical symbols, manipulating the symbols and converting the answer back to English that is important, whether it is candy from the store or drugs on the street. Just learning that a+ b = b + a is not really learning the use of mathematics.
Could you please bring this closer to topic? Thanks.
There are regulars on this message board that are guilty of not knowing the information in their ownerâs manual, even educated people overlook things at times.
The one problem I have with dipsticks these days, you have a low, or full, but does that mean you add a quart, 1/3 quart, no where in my manuals was it quantified in my later cars. So you dipstick shows low guaranteed you need a quart of oil?
Most new cars donât come with an ownerâs manual. They come with a CDROM that has a PDF copy of the ownerâs manual on it. Well, thatâs fine and dandy if you know thatâs the case, but if you donât, itâs just a coaster in your glove compartment that gets thrown away while youâre looking for the actual, real life, bona fide ownerâs manual, which is paper, dadburn it.
But the more likely explanation is that in most major metropolitan areas, dealerships are having a very hard time finding mechanics (they ought to pay mechanics more, but theyâre sort of constrained by what the vehicle manufacturers will reimburse for labor) and getting a service appointment can take as much as six weeks. What is someone supposed to do in the six weeks between the âCheck Engineâ light coming on and the dealership actually looking at their car? Well, they post here. Duh.
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Youâve made an excellent point, elgreen.
They do it for cost reduction. In mass, CDROMs or their replacements (thumb drives) cost pennies to make. Ownerâs manuals cost dollars to print. For a large manufacturer, that adds up. Note that I am not justifying the change, I hate it, Iâm just defining the cause of it.
Iâm curious as to whether a manufacturer that provides only a CD would (through the dealer) provide a new car buyer with a printed ownerâs manual upon request. Anybody know?
Iâm not sure I agree with @elgreen99
I have yet to encounter a new vehicle in our fleet which did not come with a rather thick ownerâs manual
But these are fleet vehicles, which arenât very well equipped
Maybe you have to spend the big bucks to qualify for a CD-ROM 
Iâll have to check this out the next time Iâm at a dealership. Itâs been thirteen years since Iâve bought a new car, but what elgreen is saying would not surprise me.
I bought a new 2017 Toyota Sienna this past August and it came with a big, thick printed owners manual.
Thatâs good to hear. Hopefully yours is the more common experience.
Enjoy your Sienna. It was a good choice.
@the_same_mountainbike Thanks for the vote of confidence. This is our second Sienna. We had a 2011 Sienna which we sold to our son at a great family discount. The 2017 is almost the same vehicle. Being the old.geezer that I am, itâs hard for me to adapt to something that is too different. (I still think I should be shifting gears when I drive the car or keypunching cards when I use the computer. We still have a wind-up clock in use at our house. I also still have a typewriter. The last time I used the typewriter was when I was the featured soloist with the orchestra I play in when we performed Leroy Andersonâs short piece called âTypewriterâ).
Our Acura came with a manual and a CD. Iâve only looked at the CD once but I think the CD covers a little more detail. Still with the manual, tire information, lemon law information for 50 states, etc. Itâs still an inch thick and doesnât fit in the glove box very well. What gets me with the CD though is you canât refer to it in the car. Still they didnât have much warranty information except âsome wear items are not coveredâ. What I wanted to know is if a strut is a wear item or not. My Pontiac lists quite a few parts that are covered or not.
All new Chiseler Corporation vehicles only come with the CDROM. You can, however, call Chiseler Customer Service and theyâll mail you a paper copy of the ownerâs manual for free. I did that with both my Jeep and my minivan.
Toyota is old school. My guess is that GM is old school too. Heck, GM even has paper service manuals for their vehicles still â everybody else has moved to online subscription services.
None of which solves the problem of it taking six weeks to get an appointment to handle a warranty repair in most high-cost metropolitan areas. Chiseler pays the same per warranty repair whether youâre in San Francisco or in Bugtussle Iowa, but the cost of living is a lot less in Bugtussle. So dealers in the high-cost areas are always backed up because theyâre not being reimbursed enough to be able to hire as many mechanics as theyâd like to have. Either that, or warranty repairs get put at the back of the queue and it takes a week to change a burnt out light bulb.