Ron

Making change is not so bad, relying on the cash register, *it's that they
can not count it back to you. *They just dump a wad in your hand and recite
what the register indicated to give as change.

I was probably being a little over-critical. Partly because I grew up
in a family retail environment. My family owned a service station/
grocery business and later a grocery store. When I was nine, my dad
fixed me up with a modified pop crate that I could use to reach the
fuel tanks on diesel trucks so I could fill them. I was making change
a year or two later. It just dumfounds me when I go into Wendy's or
another fast-food store, and get the blank stare when a kid has to
make change.

We are not equipping a lot of our youth to work. Our son is a
construction superintendent for a good sized construction firm. He
loves his Hispanic workers because they will work. They WANT TO
WORK. He has said several times that the average life span of a
gringo high-school grad, on his job, is about two weeks. By then most
of them are physically exhausted, burned out and are looking for a
good fast-food opportunity that pays less money. Just can't handle
the work. Unfortunately, a surprisingly large percentage of
construction management college grads suffer from the same disease.
Our boy was offered an opportunity to go straight to the office from
college and respectfully declined. He asked to be left in the field,
were he and worked and interned part-time in college, so he could
learn the trade from the trenches. I think it was a good decision
that gained him some respect from the company, as well as personal
knowledge. Now after about 8 years in the field with several large
projects under his belt, he is thinking about taking a management
job. Too many of his college grad colleagues think that an office,
BMW and a new house are god-given rights right out of school.

I know not all young ones are lazy or dumb. Just too many of them.
No wonder Japan and China are kicking our ass in engineering and
manufacturing.

RonB