I don't find the salaries that high in practice (depends heavily on where you live), teenagers on the street are anything but polite and I don't know what you mean about counting and spelling. I do know that every time I've been in a store that lost power I wasn't able to check out because no one in the store knew how to assess the taxes.

Okay - 1 and 2 make sense; teenagers: are they really polite? my sarcasm detector is off - if comparing it to the scumbag quotient of the British Isles then I totally see where you are coming from; can shop assistants count and spell better?

I am indeed thinking of the British Isles (glad you spotted that: I suspected I needed to qualify that claim somehow). I'm convinced that Americans spell their own language better than the British (or the French), who can misspell any handmade sign however simple. I probably don't have enough anecdotal evidence to make the counting claim compelling, but I've never managed to confuse an American cashier by overpaying in some complicated way in order to get fewer coins in change.

Hmmm, yes, damn do we specialise in that untended-to social minority of scumbags.

I must try that next time I am over. Perhaps they are better at mental arithmetic because they are always adding the tax back on?

>but I've never managed to confuse an American cashier by overpaying in some complicated way in order to get fewer coins in change.

You have better luck than me. I have an issue nearly every time I do this in the states. I always just smile and say "type it into the machine and you'll see".