Alright, okay, I admit it. It was bound to come out eventually anyway, so I might as well tell the world before the world finds out from someone else. I am not ashamed of it. I am proud of it.
I like math, and I am good at it.
Let me define good at it. I do not mean that I can do crazy Rain Man arithmetic in my head. I can do a little arithmetic in my head and get pretty close to the answer. But I'm slow, and there's a good chance I'll be wrong. I hate to break it to you, but in college math classes, they don't spend a lot of time teaching you extended multiplication tables. We use calculators for that.
A professor told me a story about when she was going to take her Comprehensive, which is a great big math test that graduate students take that makes the SAT math section look like a pop quiz. At the time, she was explaining to a non-math person that she had spent days upon days studying for this test. The person replied in all seriousness, "Wow, there must be some really tough fractions on that thing." Yeah, fractions. Not multi-dimensional calculus or abstract algebra or statistics, but just a bunch of really tough fractions.
Like I said, I can do some math in my head, mostly stuff I've picked up from waitressing and not my math classes. Trust me, I got really good at calculating 10%, 15%, and 20% of a check total pretty quick. I've waited tables for two years now. That's a lot of percentages.
Math is not embraced at The Bistro. They see it as just another of my weird quirks, along with the novelty earrings, the bowling shoes, and the sarcasm. If possible, they disdain math and math nerds there. I was reading a biography of Paul Erdos (who is second only to Euler in the number of math papers he published), and a fellow server said, "Please tell me you're not reading that for pleasure." When I said I was, everyone else joined in the eye-rolling and laughing, except for one of the kitchen guys, who leaned in and whispered, "Can I borrow it when you're done?" He's a math major. My coworkers were not impressed with my pi earrings, either. Seems like there was some eye-rolling the first day I wore those, too.
They can scorn all they want. I scorn the fact that a group of seasoned servers can't tell the difference between a good tip and a bad tip. One girl was griping about a tip before I looked at it and told her it was nearly 20% of the check total. Most of them will go back behind the bar and pull out a calculator so they can decide whether or not to be pissed off about a tip. Did I mention that most of these people are about to graduate from college and that they all have at least two years experience waiting tables?
Once I was working the bar and was cashing out a check. The customer gave me $48.18 for a $40.18 check, and the change was the tip. I brought up the check and just hit cash rather than enter 48.18 and then cash to see the change. I knew the change. The owner came over and actually fussed at me. Then she asked, "Do you do that all the time?" I answered, "Only when the change is easy to figure out." Again the eye-rolling. I could understand if I had been doing something like $53.72 - $38.91 in my head, she would be justifiably concerned that my internal calculator would be unreliable. Subtraction isn't even my forte, particularly when borrowing and canceling are involved. But $48.18 - $40.18? Please.
The people I worked with were the ones who asked "When are we ever going to use this?" when they learned multiplication. You know what? You use it. I've been in classes where that question was asked and the teacher said, "Probably never." I know perfectly well that I will never ever use Laplace Transforms (differential equations), eigenvalues (linear algebra), and Jacobian matrices (calc 3) again. I can do them all, and I happen to think that Laplace Transforms are pretty neat, but I know I'll never use it. But I sure as heck use multiplication. Everyone does. I don't expect everyone to be good at it. But I expect some things. I expect people not to need machines to do the same calculations their job requires every day. I expect waitresses with three to four years experience to be able to tell that on a $70 check, a $14 tip is great and $9 is crap. I don't expect to be treated like a freak because I can subtract nice round numbers.
But whatever. Depending on your stance on math, you're either nodding emphatically or still working out $48.18 - $40.18. Maybe you're still rolling your eyes over the fact that I own pi earrings, which, by the way, are really cool. But even my math-hating coworkers can tell that my new salary is a lot higher than theirs. Roll your eyes at that.
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