I, for one, will welcome our machine overlords

Two weeks ago I was in our local video store renting a DVD, and my total was $2.11. I handed the kind, if somewhat slack-jawed, young cashier a 5 dollar bill, and the young man gave me $3.89 in change. I briefly thought about it, then said "I think you gave me an extra dollar," and tried to hand it back to him. He said, "No, I didn't." Since there was no one in line behind me I explained the mathematical error, and why I was trying to give him a dollar back, and he said, "That's what the machine told me to give you." Mmmmkay. Have a nice day, Skippy. Use extra Chap-Stick while you're breathing through your mouth and taking orders from a cash register.

Normally I would write this off as young stupidity, but it happened again yesterday at the movie theater. I bought some treats for our group, and the total came to $18.75. I handed the young man a $50, grabbed my change and went to get our seats. It was only later, when we were in the car going home that I found the kid had given me the wrong change -- instead of giving me the difference from the $50, he instead gave me $18.75, shorting me by about 12 bucks. Unhappy, we went back to the theater, where we found Skippy Jr. and explained the situation to him. He said he didn't think there was any way to check it out, but got a manager anyway. Miss Manager was very perky and attentive to our problem and when she came on the scene, Skippy Jr. told her, "I remember her, I just gave her what the machine told me to." Miss Manager took 5 minutes counting the drawer down, found the mistake and refunded our money with her sincere apologies. Once again we were happy customers.

What is up with Skippy and Skippy Jr.? Are they anomolies, or are they representative of our young people today, unable to think for themselves and catch a simple math error? Don't they cover decimals and multi-figure addition and subtraction in grade school? They can't fathom that something the machine did might be wrong? Or the more likely option, that they made an error and stupidly blame it on the machine?

I just did what the machine told me to. I hope Skippy and Skippy Jr. can meet some day and get their stories straight as to how exactly they are going to surrender and swear allegiance to their robot overlords.