Steve Dulieu wrote:

On the subject of training, is it just me, or has every bar person in the
UK lost the ability to add up/check the price of a drink as they pour it?
old git mode when I were a lad, working in a pub you would add the round
as you went along & inform the punter of the damage as you handed him/her
the last drink. Today, the process seems to be serve drinks then prod
listlessly at the till, sometimes asking the punter to remind them what
they've just served them, until enlightenment dawns and a sum of money is
requested. And then asks the sodding great queue that's formed "who's
next?" then wonders why some people get a bit upset! /old git mode

Not sure about pubs but when I worked in a coffee shop some years ago we
entered everything * on the till via short codes and never had training in
what the actual prices were or if they had changed (the stock did rotate
about a bit). But also in the intensity on the till where a lot of drinks
have similar names and multiple sizes and you're dealing with people in
rapid succession it's very risky to rely on mental arithmatic to add up the
bill as you can easily make a mistake and tell the customer before the till
rectifies it.

(* Annoyingly some customers would bring sandwiches from the food hall two
floors below, resulting in us on the till having to dig up the infrared
reader, which was generally parked in such a way that this was very awkward.
Those sandwiches also had a different price on them but it was hard to say
they were technically food from outside when we were taking money for them!)