“I used to volunteer at a local library when I was in high school. every year they had a book sale to help raise money for events. $0.25 for paperbacks and $0.50 for hardbacks. I was also working retail at this time so I decided being cashier would be pretty appropriate.

It was going pretty well. I kept the line moving and was used to the small talk of being at a register. The head librarian was busy organizing and she had one of the mom volunteers keep an eye on things. Not too long after she starter ‘supervising,’ she came over to me and told me she didn’t think it was a good idea for me to be on register.

I was pretty confused by this. No one had complained, there was hardly ever a wait, there was no reason for her to think I wasn’t capable. I told her it was fine, that I was used to this with my part time job. She was still visibly uneasy and insisted I help with something else. It got to the point where she was practically demanding me to go somewhere else. Not wanting to cause a scene, I went to assist elsewhere.

I found out later she thought the math of calculating the totals was too hard for ‘children’ to be responsible for. Seriously? I was in AP Calc and she didn’t think I could add $0.25 and $0.50 increments? The best part of it all was that my mom went to the book sale a few years after and the same lady was on register. She had a cheat sheet for adding up the book totals…

I’m still bitter.

Edit: For those wondering about the cheat sheet, it was a list of the $0.25 increments like this:

$0.25

$0.50

$0.75

$1.00

$1.25 etc.” – alm16h7y1