Think McFly!!! Think!!!

Pet peeves. We all have them. I am almost certain that if I were to ask you one of yours, it wouldn't take you long to come up with one. We all have those certain things that seem to annoy us. I, just like many of you, have many pet peeves. Recently though, one has seemed to come to the forefront. Let me see if I can set this up.

I received a $10 Sonic gift card for Christmas. Mollie and I used all but thirty something cents of the $10. The next trip we made to Sonic, our purchase was in the ballpark of $12. Not wanting to let any money go to waste, I was going to use up the remainder of the gift card and pay the balance with my debit card. I told the carhop what I wanted to do. She took both cards in to complete the transaction only to come back and tell me that she applied the balance on the card to my order, but because I paid for part of the order with my gift card, I had to pay cash for the remaining balance. In other words, I couldn't pay part with a gift card and the rest with a debit &/or credit card. Hmmmmm......

Next story. I went to a different Sonic for lunch today. I ordered a Corn Dog Wacky Pack with Apple Slices. Instead of the kid's drink, I wanted to substitute a large ice water. Not a lot to ask, huh? Well, the lady taking my order told me my cost was $2.85. That didn't sound right. The Wacky Pack's cost was $3.19 so I knew there was no way $2.85 was correct. Wanting to check my order, I asked her to repeat it. She repeated my order and again said it was $2.85. Ok, I thought, I will just get a cheap lunch today. A few minutes later, they buzz me to tell me I can't get a large drink because a Wacky Pack comes with a drink. She said I could get a small bottle of water, but not a large cup of water. I hesitated for a moment and then told her, "How about you give me a corn dog, some apple slices and a large ice water?" She told me she could do that and that my order would cost $3.35. This is about what the price should have been to begin with!

I say all of that not to diss Sonic, but to pose this question. WHY DON'T WE THINK ANY MORE?????!!!!!! It seems as if today we memorize processes. If one of these processes is out of order or doesn't happen, we are in trouble. It would be like me asking you to run to Jonesboro for me to pick up something and then you learn that Highway 1 is closed in Harrisburg. Since you can't get through Harrisburg, you tell me that you can't get to Jonesboro. Really?? You can't take Hwy 64 to Hwy 49 and go that way? You can't take Hwy 1 to Hwy 42, turn left and go to Hwy 49 and go up? WE DON'T THINK ANYMORE!!!!! We learn step 1, step 2 and step 3 to get the end product at step 4.

I see this everywhere I look. If it can't be done the way that I learned it, then it can't be done at all. I have to wonder if students today don't learn to problem solve. When my little brother was in school, he had some problems with his math homework. Even though there was more than one way to solve the problem, it was imperative that he do it a certain way or his teacher would count it wrong, even though he arrived at the correct answer. Is this what we are teaching today? Oh I hope not! Maybe it is because we live in a computer generation. Everything is automated now, so we don't have to think anymore. The computer will do it for us.

Regardless of how we have gotten here, we are here and we must do something about it before the USA is left in the dark. Until then I guess I will have to work up some type of tolerance to combat this pet peeve of mine.