{"id":2824,"date":"2010-11-10T19:40:17","date_gmt":"2010-11-11T00:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/?p=2824"},"modified":"2010-11-10T19:40:17","modified_gmt":"2010-11-11T00:40:17","slug":"wegmans-brand-math","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2010\/11\/wegmans-brand-math.html","title":{"rendered":"Wegmans Brand Math"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Wegmans\"<\/a>In mathematics, addition is subject to the Commutative Law.\u00a0 That is, if 2+3=5 then we may also say 3+2=5… unless you work at the local Wegmans grocery store.<\/p>\n

I was in the cashier’s line behind a matronly woman whose order the young girl at the register was finishing up.\u00a0 The girl announced. “That will be $104.62 today.”\u00a0 The woman thumbed through her wallet and extracted a $50 bill and three crisp $20s, which she handed to the cashier.<\/p>\n

The girl promptly started counting the money out, announcing her total as she went.\u00a0 “50, 70, 90, 100,” she said.\u00a0 Upon completion, she turned to the woman and\u00a0 reminded her of the total.\u00a0 The woman smiled sweetly at the young lass and suggested that perhaps she could count it out again.\u00a0 Once more the girl confidently said, “50, 70, 90, 100.”\u00a0 This time she ended with, “You’re still short $4.62.”<\/p>\n

The woman was maintaining her composure, but looked as if she really wanted to grab the sweet thing by her pigtails and say something that started with, “LISTEN MISSY!”\u00a0 To her credit, she instead asked the girl how much the three $20s were worth.<\/p>\n

Fanning the bills in her hand the cashier said, “$60.”<\/p>\n

“And how much is 60 plus 50,” the patient woman softly inquired?<\/p>\n

You could almost see the wheels of the poor young girl’s mind grind to a halt as the pain of this dawning contradiction came across her.\u00a0 With renewed determination, she grasped the short stack of bills and began counting aloud again.\u00a0 “50, 70, 90, 100.”<\/p>\n

In an effort to be helpful, I offered that perhaps she should start counting with the $20s.\u00a0 The girl’s face brightened momentarily, and she flipped the stack and started counting yet again.\u00a0 “20, 40, 60, 110.”\u00a0 She looked positively delighted with herself while the poor woman in line just imperceptibly shook her head.<\/p>\n

The cashier now looked at me and asked, “So why doesn’t it work when I do it the other way?”<\/p>\n

I offered, somewhat less helpfully, “I guess it’s just one of those math mysteries no one understands.”\u00a0 An explanation the young girl seemed quite satisfied with as she finally began to count change.\u00a0 However, the matronly woman lowered her head and gave me a look over her glasses that was oddly reminiscent of my high school geometry teacher who also took it upon herself to make it clear to me that I was not nearly as amusing as I imagined.<\/p>\n

Not wishing to push my luck, I paid for my order with a credit card.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If 2+3=5 then we may also say 3+2=5… unless you work at the local Wegmans grocery store.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5,8],"tags":[56,55],"class_list":["post-2824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-justforfun","category-madscience","category-sliceoflife","tag-math","tag-wegmans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2824"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2829,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2824\/revisions\/2829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}