I am not Asian?!?
During one of my banking days, a regular customer came into my office and asked me if I could help him. He was in a rush and the line was really long. Since I knew the customer I took his check and deposit slip and assured him I would deposit. Then he left.
Once the line was reduced to 2 people I went behind the teller line with that check to deposit. I waited for one of the tellers to complete his transaction. While he was in the process of completing, he had to calculate to give his customer cash back. I was standing right next to him and saw the check.
The customer gave him a check for $3856.74 and wanted $325.00 cash back. Teller was writing the customer’s name and account number on a generic deposit slip, then he wrote the check amount and right next to cash back he wrote the amount in cash.
The next step for him was to write the total deposit amount. At that point, the teller was trying to figure out what the actual deposit amount was. I wanted to say it but did not want to interfere while he was figuring it out. Then he was a bit flustered and grabbed his calculator. That was when I said in a low tone, “It is $3,531.74”. He heard but ignored me, and started to calculate. He saw the result and looked at me with a surprise. Once his customer left, there were no other customers at the time. Then I gave my deposit and check for him to complete that transaction.
Just before doing that, he said to me, “How did you know that was the right amount, without the calculator?”
I said with a smile, “It was simple, I calculated it in my mind”.
He looked at me with a really confused look and said, “But you are not Asian, How can you calculate it in your mind?” LOL!!!
I said, “If you learned math at school without using calculators, you would automatically figure it out. Especially simple calculations such as these, you don’t have to be an Asian to figure this out”.
And then I said, “By the way, I AM Asian,” He said “No you are not. You are from India” Once again LOL!!!
By the way, he was Asian too. But he couldn’t figure that out!!! Oh, that’s right…. He learned math by using calculators