Verizon Phone Call Post Four

After listening to the Verizon Phone call I am surprised that these workers could even qualify for Verizon jobs. I am shocked that Verizon allowed this to go on, allowed people so ignorant to work in their stores. It makes Verizon as a company look bad, I am sure many people began scanning thier Verizon bills and checking every math problem. Especially because you would think they would have to deal with questions like this on a daily basis. If you work in billing you need to know how to bill. Verizon should have prep classes and training to prevent situations like this. The women is even so ignorant to say "It's a difference of opinion" when really it's just simple math facts. How do these workers even actively live in the world if they dont know the difference between a whole cent and a whole dollar. Children 10 year olds, or even 5 year olds understand the difference between cents and dollars. How could you possible add .002 cents and end up with such a large whole dollar amount. One cent is small and .002 cents are even smaller!

This ties into our decimals chapter because if the decimal was in a different spot the number would have been different. To properly write one cent we have 1.0 cents or 2.0 cents which would be two pennies. For whole dollars it would read $1.0 for one dollar or $2.0 for two dollars. We also need to read the labels, which we went over in our decimal chapter. Yes, these two numbers do look the same on paper, until you read the labels. Than they become two different numbers entirely. One is dealing with two thousandths of a penny opposed to two thousandths of a dollar. They are both two thousandths of something but the something is different. One for whole dollars and one for whole cents.

It is so important to teach this in elementary school because if we don't we could wind up with tons of people who dont know the difference. After elementary school you can start buying things on your own, if you are trying to buy something and don't know the difference between cents and whole dollars than someone can easily take advantage of you. In elementary school is where we should learn the basics of our life skills. I would definitely say that this is a basic life skill. If we don't teach it in elementary school than the student could get to middle school or high school and have this thrown at them. They become even more confused because they have never been taught this before. It becomes a bigger barrier than it ever had to be.

Hopefully, Verizon will learn and get their workers the proper training they need. Maybe parents will see this phone call and learn to teach their children proper money math. Just the frustration that you can hear from the man in the phone call should be enough to imply how much we need to teach children and obviously even some adults proper math.