I am good at math. I am not good at calculus or trigonometry or any of that hard stuff, so don't ask me to explain why the cosecant is the reciprocal of the sine. I'm good at adding/subtracting/multiplying and the like. I'm the guy who will help with a tip or who will congratulate you on your 44th birthday b/c you are halfway between 18 and 70.
I am also good at going to Dunkin' Donuts. They are ubiquitous in New Jersey. I like their coffee. I like their app. And I always need a PM coffee fix. We have two in my town, and at least three more in the two towns next to us. I go to one every day for that afternoon fix. Mornings are for home-brew. Afternoons are for DD.
I go to one particular store most of the time. I know the folks there pretty well. I order via the app, pick up my stuff and thank them. Sometimes, I tip them in the tip jar by the To Go orders. Sometimes, I'll spontaneously buy some munchkins for my kids. I usually only ask for a few. They always give me more. Everybody wins.
I went to my local DD the other day. DD is a franchise. Franchisees set their own prices. Usually, local prices are on top of each other. Sometimes there is an errant price. And I usually notice. Because math. I got in line to order munchkins. I looked at the menu before ordering and got confused. The munchkin pricing made no sense! An order of ten munchkins was $2.49 (a quarter each). An order of fifty was $10.99 ($0.22 each). But what threw me was the order for 25 munchkins. They were asking $6.99 for that size! That, my friends, is $0.28 each. Makes no sense.
I stepped to the counter. And then I made the mistake. Instead of holding my tongue, I went and tried to mathsplain the pricing issue to the woman behind the counter. I did it w/ a smile and a tone of jovial banter, trying to minimize the annoyingness. But my mask hid my smile. And my tonal intentions may not have resonated with the Filipino woman working the counter.
I see this woman 3-4 times a week. We were friendly. Emphasis on were. I prefaced my conversation with "I know you don't set the prices, but it doesn't make sense how..." I even broke it down to the "that order is 25 cents each, that one is 28 each and that one is 22 each" level.
There's a 50% chance the woman understood the mathematical point I was trying to make. But there was a 100% chance she didn't appreciate it. She gave me a terse look and went about her munchkin business. I took my coffees and my bag of munchkins and headed home. When I got home, I counted my munchkins. There were exactly 20 in the bag. Stone cold move by her. That's what I get for mathsplaining.
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