I have a similar problem at my local deli, when I ask for a third of a pound of turkey. All the guy needs to do is keep an eye on the scale. And I am not asking for perfection! I guess decimals have gone the way of telling time on clocks with hands.

I hear you. My biggest complaint about the box stores is going for one quart of paint and finding i know more about paint than the clerk mixing the color and selling it. Different box store, but my brother and i were making a few small repairs on mothers house to sell it for her when she moved to senior living. He came back from (closest) Lowe's with an $80 gal of paint that looked like we were smearing French's yellow mustard on her quiet brown house. I left and drove a little farther to a Home Depot and that man in the paint department all but turned himself wrong side out getting the color to a perfect match. He barely spoke English but knew what he was doing and would accept nothing less than flawless for my purchase.

DH can go on for hours about how not every young person needs one or more college degrees. What are we going to do for tradespeople in a few years. We will still need electricians, carpenters, appliance repair persons....

Don't even get me started on trying to order bed pillow protectors with gussets from a salesperson who did not know what a gusset was, had never heard the term....

i recently made a purchase at a dollar general store. the cashier, a high school girl, owed me $3.27 in change. she handed me 3 one dollar bills and then said she didn't know how to give me 27 cents. the register was telling her how much change to give me but i had to explain she needed to give me 1 quarter and 2 pennies.

we are doomed.

I asked for quarter inch threaded rod...in a hardware store. Guy said they didn't carry it....I looked down...at his feet...there was a 5 gallon bucket of it! He was standing next to it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hear ya and I concur.

On a related note, DH went for an eye dr appointment a few months ago and the office staff was sharing with him that it seemed anyone under 30 or so needed assistance in filling out the basic questionnaire. It was with a pen and paper and you had to check a box- not digitally.

They said well educated under 30 was really challenged with that task.

It's the basic reading riting and rithmetic we need. skillz

I would like to think that these young people were high school dropouts but fractions/decimals should have been taught & learned early on in elementary school.....but I'd bet these folks are experts at operating an I-phone, although they may think that 0 follows the number 9.

I’d say we older generations only have ourselves to blame. We didn’t invest in education and our children’s future. Now we are reaping what was sown. It’s not the fault of the younger generation that they didn’t learn. It’s the fault of older generations that we didn’t teach them.

Well, Kendrah encountered one person who paid attention in school (and didn’t have family support) and another who did pay attention (and had family support). So she’s batting .500 at the store.

I too would expect someone working at a station that involves fractional measurements and math would have the ability to understand and do what such work requires. There are too many reasons that pop into one's head as to why she was there and not someone else, and why she was not instead working somewhere elsewhere in the store requiring less or no math. But that leads nowhere.

Without addressing her job assignment, perhaps she's simply one of the large percentage of our population who find dealing with numbers and even simple math difficult. I know people like that, everyone does. I don't find numerical or quantitative things difficult, but those who do certainly have other abilities that I don't have.

Maybe this lady has a college degree in English or some other area in the humanities.

I wonder how that young lady interpreted her GPA if it was 3.75? The whole concept of not knowing that 3/4 of anything is a thing, is mind-boggling. She never made brownies from a mix? or did a craft that called for 3/4 of a sheet of paper? She never even heard of it? That’s really amazing.

There is hope, though. I really struggled with math, heck, with arithmetic, in school. Once I got to college, it started making sense. When I wanted to buy edging to go around a tree at my new house, I finally understood what pi is for (and I did much better in geometry in high school than in algebra). Having a mathematician kid helped even further (I had to work hard to keep up with him, though by the time he was four I knew I was doomed).

I am not surprised one little bit. Have you ever watched Jimmy Kimmel's person on the street not having answers a grade schooler would know?

Why assume this woman had a degree in anything including a high school diploma?

People have been complaining about kids not being able to make change as long as I can remember and I am old.

People have been complaining about the inadequacies of the younger generation for over two thousand years.

You cant compare the money spent on educating students from one part of the country to another because the cost of living in those areas varies wildly. The cost of living will affect how far your education money goes.

For those of us who are boomers the previous generation carped endlessly about how useless, soft, lazy, entitled and arrogant we were.

My class rooms were generally 35 to 40 students to one teacher. I got educated and my equally bright brother did not.

patriciae

I'm going back decades and remember a study where Baltimore was so short of teachers, they were hiring people who were unqualified with the requirement that they attend remedial education at night so they could learn what they were supposed to be teaching! So if the teachers don't get it, how on earth are the next generation of teachers supposed to be better?

$ per student doesn't necessarily tell the story. Again going back decades, I remember they estimated that only 1 c of every dollar spent on education in NYC actually went to the students. The rest was tapped off in graft, corruption, bureaucracy, etc all along the way. Also there's the problem of average. You know the old story about the economist standing with one foot in a bucket of ice water and the other in boiling water and he says, on average, we're good. Same with schools...some are well funded and provide an excellent education....others, suffer badly.

Kevin9408. There are several points in your comment with which I disagree. Our local school district is the second best in our state and has a teacher ratio of 25 to 1. I have never encountered 14 to 1 in any school district. I am a pediatricic geneticist so I need to know something about current school systems. Part of the additional cost of current education is the federally mandated need to improve education for special-needs children. I happen to agree with the need for these mandates for the most part, but they do add cost to education. When I was in school, many special-needs kids were merely warehoused. It’s also important to remember that there is an essential need for today’s children to learn a lot more about computer science for example, which is expensive to teach. With respect to behavior, many of today’s kids, unfortunately come from very dysfunctional homes. They arrive at school without having learned basic manners or behavioral expectations. As a result teachers spend an enormous amount of time, correcting students. Finally, as a pediatric geneticist, I can say that the incidence of autism spectrum disorders has increased significantly requiring much more intensive effort in the classroom. The increased incidence of autism spectrum disorders is not related to vaccines and is not solely due to better diagnosis. In summary, there are more special needs kids in classrooms requiring more intensive effort. I hope these observations help you to see that the problems with education are enormous and complex and do require more funding than in the past . It would be helpful if more kids came to school ready to learn. This is not a liberal/conservative problem. It’s reality and it’s the future of our nation. I would hope we would be willing to invest in it.

"For those of us who are boomers the previous generation carped endlessly about how useless, soft, lazy, entitled and arrogant we were."

And they were right with a finger on the problem. Hippie boomers who took over the school systems. Laziest bunch of people since the their children's generation, snowflake millennials who double downed on useless, soft lazy, entitled arrogance.

I'll be happy when every boomer is out of politics for good and skips over the millennials and hands off the country directly to the Zoomers.

I am a boomer. Right in the middle and I moved around a lot and lived a whole bunch of places and went to lots of schools.

Your average boomer was not a hippie or anything close. The guys wore their shirts tucked in and the girls wore polyester dresses and nice shoes. They often paid more attention to each other than their school work but still they were white bread American. How could hippies take over the school systems when there were in truth so few of them? It is rare for a Boomer to admit they weren't some sort of rebellious stoner but so it is.

patriciae

Dang! Next time - give the advice to "google it"!

"legislators to keep taking more and more money out of public education".

I here ya! just this year in my state Tim Walz proposes spending $17.16 billion in the 2026-27 biennium on education, cutting more than $34.5 million. The cuts would continue in 2028-29, shaving off another $114.8 million. And to think some want him to run for president in 2028.

“Have you ever watched Jimmy Kimmel's person on the street not having answers a grade schooler would know?”

No, but I’ve seen lots of others that are pretty unreal. Most recent were questions for college kids. Question: Who fought in the Civil War? Answer: Japan and Germany.😵‍💫😵

Working in an middle school math program for the lower level students I can tell you yes decimals and money and increments of half and quarter are taught and retaught from elementary through 8th grade, probably beyond. The issue is what is taught is not learned, not internalized. Nothing is put to memory. The teacher would teach the days concept. The students would have a worksheet. The students came forward every few problems and the problems were checked. The next day a new concept was taught. Nothing was brought home. No "grade" was given on the days worksheet. "Why would I assess your practice" the teacher often said. This is standard based teaching/learning. After a month of daily work sheets a review sheet is handed out. Same process, do the work there in the room, don't take it home. The next day a test with the exact same problems but different numbers is given. That is the one and only grade for that unit. You get a 0 No information if you don't take the test. A 1 if you put your name on the test and attempt a problem, does not meet expectations, a 2, if you didn't finish all the work but you got most correct. A 3 if you finished all the work but missed some a 4, above expectations, if you got it all done and most of it correct. If I had been taught this way, no studying, no real evaluation of how well I understood what was being taught (homework graded) I would be in the same boat. We don't expect students to master their work. We expect them to try. Practice makes Progress (no perfect, like the old days). Granted these students who struggled learning Math...but as I said WHO could master anything when there is no carry over, no homework?

I have had the opposite experience in Palm Springs, but the workers in Lowe's and Home Depot are very much older and look like they should already be retired. Anyway, they are extremely knowledgeable and extremely friendly and helpful. There is not much of a young population here, at least that I have seen, especially when shopping.

I found people at the Home Depot in Marina Del Rey also to be helpful and knowledgeable, as well as the people at the fabric stores in West L.A. and downtown.

Academics have always taken a backseat to sports. My school years were from 1969 to 1981. I recall a 7th/8th grade MATH teacher fussing at the class because of too many boys who weren't playing football.

I did actually think that a course in parts of an inch might have been helpful there but we are talking someone who is older. I wonder how she came to understand how to use a machine which is all about measurements.

I was part of an interesting discussion back many years ago. We were all at a group meeting of fiber spinners. Not a usual sort of thing I will grant you. Anyway somehow we got around to school and they all started in on the fact that when they were in school no one made it clear to them why they were expected to learn all this estoteric stuff. They blamed the teachers for not making a hole in their heads and pouring in the fact that no one spends this kind of money on you for no reason at all. Well that isnt what they said but they wanted to blame teachers for not making it clear they were learning this stuff for a reason. As the person who stood out in the crowd as being actually educated I couldnt say anything. It was sticky for me. I cant see that the problem has been resolved. Maybe that is what is needed. Keep telling them this is costing a whole lot of money and you are supposed to be learning it for a reason.

patriciae

Years, Years ago....Big sign outside of McDonalds: Thank you for your Patients while we remodel. In New York, New York around 42nd street(don't remember the avenue).

As I ordered, I said who created that sign - with all of you school kids in here - no one can spell patience. The cashier just looked at me and smiled.

"If she could operate the machine", it quite possible she has a learning disability, called dyscalculia. Those with learning disabilities often have a high IQ, but the LD prevents them from demonstrating their full potential. Keep in mind that Lowe's is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Should you want to continue with your complaint, talk with the manager of the store where you went on Sunday. I do not think this is the forum.

PS .machine?

Wow, Joy. Nothing will improve until people start being kind to each other again. You might want to take your own advice. You were not very kind to the OP.

Personally I would not have the time nor inclination to try to teach an employee grammar school level math. I can only imagine how my blinds would come out. Kindness has nothing to do with it. Kendrah, I do hope you let the store know that you took your business elsewhere. They need to take responsibility for making certain employees are competent to manage their jobs.

I would have used this as a learning opportunity and showed her what 3/4" of an inch looked like. I might have asked her for a tape measure and showed her. Done nicely and kindly, you had the perfect opportunity to teach someone something. And maybe show her some other measurements too. You would be helping her and perhaps the next customer.

And the title "Horror at Lowes" - a bit dramatic. Is that really a horror? Someone shooting up the store? That's a horror.

I was at Value Village and had a 20% off coupon. Good for up to $20. My items came to $18.50. The sweet young thing read the coupon and said I had to spend $20. I showed her that it says up to $20. We went back and forth, with her insisting I had to spend the full amount. There was quite a lineup and I didn't want to take up any more of their time. There was no telling her. So I picked up a trinket for the balance.

I am reminded of a skit I saw on tv a while back. A reporter stopped random people on the street and asked, ”who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?” and then ”who lives in a pineapple under the sea?” with predictable results.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

I'm betting that was orders from mgmt, Jasdip, and whomever concocted that coupon is to blame. Coupon certainly wasn't created by that staff member.

I've learned the hard way to parse the fine print on sales offers very carefully.

These days, I also consider that some folks might be struggling with brain injury from an accident, stroke, long COVID, or any number of causes...

“It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.“

Agree!

Someone will always come along who will have more knowledge than you. Why make a stink about it?

I find that kids either have a work ethic, and figure out what they need to do, or they don’t. Unfortunately the current system of no failures and making sure everyone is always comfortable isn’t doing many kids good. You think you are doing something right until you make a mistake, and sometimes mistakes hurt. Betcha won’t do that again

I was once buying some expensive items and had two coupons worth 25% off one items. The cashier added the two 25% coupons together and said, Oh you get 50% off. I responded that I think I actually get 25% off each item, and he vehemently disagreed.🤷🏻‍♀️

" Why assume this woman had a degree in anything including a high school diploma? "

Haha, I just saw this.

You COMPLETELY misunderstood my comment.

Most people misunderstand your comments, nothing new.

You misunderstand most everything.

I'm an old woman. There have been dumb, uneducated people since Adam and Eve. The need to believe that "in my day this would never happen" might make us feel superior but of course it's nonsense. The inclination to make fun of other's shortcomings is not our best human trait. Obviously the employee had been improperly trained and was assigned a job she was unqualified to do -- that's a management problem. The shame is Lowe's.

I was @ Home Depot, they still accepted competitors coupons back then. The coupon said $7 off $20, I had $50 worth of merchandise. Cashier said I couldn't use the coupon. 😕

I wonder if it isn’t difficult for stores to find and keep retail help.

Nicole, did you ask the clerk what you could use the coupon for?

" There have been dumb, uneducated people since Adam and Eve. The need to believe that "in my day this would never happen" might make us feel superior but of course it's nonsense. "

So very, very true.

I find it's not all that unusual to need to help people do their work. Inattention, limited ability, mental distractions, I don't know.

Haven't most people ordered a sandwich at a sandwich place, answering questions asked to result in saying "I want A on X with B, no C, extra D, and no E. To Go.". and experienced something like this 10 seconds later?

"That was that M on Y, right?"- "No, A on X"

"With no B and extra C?" - "No, that was WITH B and NO C"

"And leave off the D, right?" - "No, extra D"

"And that was for here, right?" - "No, it's To Go".

It's just not that complicated.

It can be complicated if you are speaking faster than the employee can punch the order in. When someone calls me at work, the first bit of information I need is the name of the company, but many times the give me their name, and start off with a series of comments and questions, and there is nothing I can do until I get the name of the business and get into the file.

Nicole, did you ask the clerk what you could use the coupon for?

The cashier argued that I'd gone over the $20 limit! The whole line behind me told her THAT'S NOT HOW it worked...and ganged up on her. I'm usually the ONLY female wearing paint splattered clothing, race-car hat & work boots....when I'm at Home Depot. I may not garner respect anywhere else...Home Depot....I'm QUEEN! I got to use the coupon!

I once had to spend over ten minutes trying to convince a nurse that there were 24 hours in a day. Her patient needed a new IV every twelve hours, and the nurse was wanting to return one because “he only needed one a day”!

" I once had to spend over ten minutes trying to convince a nurse"

I also wasted 10 minutes at a doc's office when they called me a week after they took blood samples for my annual routine check-up to tell me there was a lab error and I needed to return to give more samples. When I went back the receptionist wanted another $20 co-pay. I said What? It was their mistake and they wanted another co-pay?? After 10 minutes the doc came out and I finally got through to give more samples. A few weeks later I got a $20 bill in the mail, so I called the Ins co and they told me to ignore it.

Another instance was when a new local restaurant opened up and I ordered their "Fish & Chips" but was only served the fish, no chips. My waiter insisted that the batter crumbs were the chips and I had to convince him that the chips were fried potatoes on the side. The manager was also ignorant about "chips" but finally relented. Never went back. These are 2 old stories.

I was in the airport yesterday and needed a tiny bit of water for a pill. I asked the Dunkin person to just fill a cup of water a quart of the way. They filled it 1/20th of the way. Not enough to swallow a pill. I asked for me. They gave it to me. My husband told me I have to stop asking for a quarter of anything! He's right.

The need to believe that "in my day this would never happen" might make us feel superior but of course it's nonsense.

I feel sad, not superior. I suck at math and would never get a job that depends on fractions. Still, I know what a quarter of something means.

In my day I am sure there were people who couldn't do fractions and they would never be hired in a hardware store. There would be some other job for them.

When I was younger, mega hardware stores and home decor stores did not exist. In my neighborhood in NYC, they don't exist either. You are helped by the owner or someone they hired who knows how to do their job. You used to be able to make an adequate living off of being a store sales person. Now it pays so little it either retired people with good skills who need to make a little extra money or just want something to do, or people who couldn't get a better job, have no skills, and are getting paid crap.

And, the owners knew that if you left their store without getting what you needed, your business would go elsewhere. Now Lowe's doesn't care because the only other place you can go to they also own. Why does it matter to them if I have to waste a lot of gas and air pollution driving from suburb to suburb to find someone who knows fractions?

I wasn't referencing anything you said Elmer. There just seemed to be a general concensus that this womans education was inadequate to her needs. It is possible she really hadnt had any. Maybe she was homeschooled? While some kids get a great education that way others get nothing but bible verses. Arithmetic and math in general is often neglected by parents who aren't confident in it themselves.

patriciae

I recently saw a man on the street interviewer guy asking a teen when was the 4th of July. He said 'I think it's in the summer, isn't it? ' The interviewer said yeah..4th? Then the kid said August?