If Grandpa worked at Jimmy John's back when he was alive ...

My grandpa loved to tell us these little puzzler stories.  He would pose them as great mathematical mysteries.  We got a kick out of them.  We would try to solve them and he would interrupt us with "No. Wrong."

Not that we were wrong.  We were right.  It turns out that he actually believed these to be unsolvable problems.

One of them is about the 3 guys who need to get a hotel room.  This one is hard for me to tell, because my brain naturally tries to add it up the way a sane person would.  I am going to try to tell it (briefly) here so you get the idea.  I will not tell it anywhere near as good as my grandpa did since he believed it was a true math "mistake".  He called it that.  Said that's what they taught him at school.  I'm sure they told him at school it was a mistake. Then he mistook their meaning.  

Once after I insisted that I understood where the folly is, he began shouting, "No! It's a mathematical mystery!  It cannot be solved!  No mathematician has ever been able to answer this!"

"But Grandpa, if the clerk has ..."

"Get the fuck out of my house!"

"But I'm only 9."

"Nine years old?  really?  That's when they made my leave the Virgin Islands.* Now get the fuck out."

So hopefully I don't mess this up. At the very least, maybe you'll see how someone might get momentarily tripped up by the story.

There's this hotel where the rooms are 25 bucks a night.  The manager is a strict man.  He's also frugal.  One night he's called away for an emergency.  There's a big convention in town. He can't close the hotel. He has no choice but to leave his clerk in charge while he's away.

Blah blah blah a bunch of people get rooms until there's only one room left

Then 3 guys come in each wanting a room.  They're desperate. They agree to split the price of the one remaining room three ways. The clerk figures he'll just tell them the rooms are $30 to make the math easier. Plus, he'll pocket the 5 bucks "for his trouble".  The manager will never know. They each pay the clerk $10 and go to the room.

Later the clerk starts to feel guilty. Even though he could use the $5 for his daughter's life saving surgery, he just would not be able to look at her knowing she lives only because of ill-gotten gains (pretty sure this part wasn't in the original).  So he gives $5 to the bellhop and tells him to return it to the guests and apologize for the mistake.

Well the unscrupulous bellhop, $5 in hand, decides to make it "easy" and give the guests $1 each and keep a fat $2 tip for himself.  His little act of dishonestly causes the fabric of the universe to disintegrate because it breaks math (according to my grandpa).

Here's the part of the story where I usually mess it up ...

So ...

In the end, the guests paid $9 each ($27) for the room.  The bellhop  has $2 profit in his pocket. That's $29. And that accounts for all of the money in this story.  Or does it? They paid $30 initially.  So where did that other dollar go?  Where? Huh? The truth dammit!!

"But 'cube, that's the stupidest thing ..."

"Get the fuck outta my blogpost!"

Anyway - I'm sure there's a better way to phrase it so it's not so obvious, but that's the gist of the story.

So why even bring it up?

Oh jeez.  I thought you'd never ask.

Yesterday, I was at Jimmy John's to order 2 sandwiches.  It was Wednesday.  I usually eat a little extra on Wednesday because of WNW.  Normally I take my own lunch to work, but I couldn't yesterday.  What I'll do is eat one sandwich at lunch and have another later on.  I don't want to be hungry on WNW.

The total of just the 2 sandwiches was $13.44, which seems really expensive to me.  It was one big turkey sandwich and one little turkey sandwich.

I handed $15 dollars to the "clerk" in training.

He punched some buttons on the register, the drawer popped open and he froze in horror.  I mean really.  He just stood there looking at something on the screen in front of him.  Something was amiss.  On my side, I could only see an LED displaying "$13.44", a motionless clerk with a $15 in his hand, and an open drawer with all sorts of change. Perfect for making, um, change.

"Uhhh ..." he assured me.

You may know that one of the things I really dislike is old people talking about "kids these days."  I don't know why.  It just seems stupid.  I think because if we were raised in this time, we'd be just like them.

But I will allow that if you're working at a cash register, you should know how to add.  You don't even need to subtract.

I was so close to explaining to the kid how to count up. I was debating demonstrating that or just saying "One fifty-six."

But the manager was right there and I was in a Wonkavator mood (I wanted to see where this was going).

"So," the clerk whispered to the man in charge, "He gave me $15 but I put in fifteen cents."

"Oh that's ok, just hit button so-and-so then clear out the whachtamajig and it'll zero.  Then  give him his change."

"Oh yeah," said the relieved clerk.  So he pushed some buttons and declared "Ok, your change is a dollar seventy-one!"

Wait.  Why did he give me $1.71?

I thought about it for a minute.  Then I realized my grandpa must've worked out the math for Jimmy John's cash registers.

I looked up to the heavens where I heard my grandpa's voice whispering, "By the way Freddie, I found out where that dollar from the hotel went.  It's not a mystery up here."

"It's not one down here either gran..."

"Get the fuck outta my heavenly resting place!"

I miss you grandpa.


*He really did say the part about the Virgin Islands.  But that was another of his jokes, told at a different time. He was 37 when I was born, so maybe he was telling the truth.