So yesterday, I went to the local sandwich shop, where I had the most amazing experience.

There was nobody at the counter. For a long time. There was one guy waiting in front of me and a vague voice from the back room, but no one was there to make sandwiches or to take orders.

After about five minutes, a girl came out and took our orders. When she took my order, she told me my total, which was about $5.38 or something, and I gave her a ten. She took out some bills, paused, then put the bills back into the cash register. I waited. She just stood, staring at the open drawer. Conservatively, I think I could have counted to 30.

Finally, I peered over and noticed that there was only two dollar-bills in the till. She couldn't make change, and, not knowing what to do, was just standing there frozen.

"You can't make change? You don't have enough ones?" I asked. She nodded. "Well, I think I have a five and a one," I said, pulling out some cash. I handed her the money and she slowly accepted it.

More time passed.

"What am I supposed to do?" she asked.

Wow.

"Give me back my ten and make change from the six dollars I just gave you," I said. "That won't require any ones."

She gave me back my ten, deleted the transaction from the register, and re-entered it so that it would calculate the correct change from $6. Then the phone rang, so she went back to answer it. Meanwhile, we waited for her to finish talking, so that she might return and make our sandwiches.

Luckily, she was pretty good at the sandwich-making part of the job, so eventually when she finally got around to making them, it was relatively quick. Still, the whole process took about 20 minutes.

Kids these days.