Keep in mind that when it comes to technical stuff, you can tell the truth but the police will misunderstand something that you said, take it down wrong and then insist that you said something that you didn't. Technical misunderstandings can happen with the police, and they aren't particularly friendly for admitting that they misunderstood.
And every language has slang. Every language has a second language within a language. Every language has misspellings and mispronunciation that leads to misunderstandings between native speakers and non-native language learners. It's not just English.
Native speakers do learn to use correct English. Quite often, they use it in school all through their education. But later they choose to use slang words more professionally and adopt parts of a new internet language to their casual conversations. That's the reason that the foreign languages section of the book store offers entire books on foreign language slang--so you can understand regional dialect.
I grew up working in fast food. I've worked at Hardee's, Burger King, Culver's, and Wawa. I can tell you this:
Change is not a complex calculation. I know how to count back change because my first manager made sure to train me in counting back change from the cost of the order to the total amount of money given. That was in 1999.
In every other food service job I've worked in since then, most of my coworkers have been unable to count back change without the dollar total staring them in the face. They always acted as robots and just handed out whatever money the register said was owed, not even checking to make sure they entered the amount in correctly. That scared me.
In other words, you are wrong. In most cases Cashiers do NOT "do that sort of thing enough that any one of them with two braincells to rub together has figured it out." They use a completely different method of counting back change. The "read the number and count up the cash" method.
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Keep in mind that when it comes to technical stuff, you can tell the truth but the police will misunderstand something that you said, take it down wrong and then insist that you said something that you didn't. Technical misunderstandings can happen with the police, and they aren't particularly friendly for admitting that they misunderstood.
English is by no means the universal language. It's just a language that's very common in a lot of places in the western world. http://anthro.palomar.edu/language/language_1.htm
And every language has slang. Every language has a second language within a language. Every language has misspellings and mispronunciation that leads to misunderstandings between native speakers and non-native language learners. It's not just English.
Native speakers do learn to use correct English. Quite often, they use it in school all through their education. But later they choose to use slang words more professionally and adopt parts of a new internet language to their casual conversations. That's the reason that the foreign languages section of the book store offers entire books on foreign language slang--so you can understand regional dialect.
I grew up working in fast food. I've worked at Hardee's, Burger King, Culver's, and Wawa. I can tell you this: Change is not a complex calculation. I know how to count back change because my first manager made sure to train me in counting back change from the cost of the order to the total amount of money given. That was in 1999. In every other food service job I've worked in since then, most of my coworkers have been unable to count back change without the dollar total staring them in the face. They always acted as robots and just handed out whatever money the register said was owed, not even checking to make sure they entered the amount in correctly. That scared me. In other words, you are wrong. In most cases Cashiers do NOT "do that sort of thing enough that any one of them with two braincells to rub together has figured it out." They use a completely different method of counting back change. The "read the number and count up the cash" method.