My mother and I sometimes go shopping for objects at the mall. Most of the time, I do not buy anything for myself. I just look around and see what creativity that these malls, stores, and businesses are doing these days. I enjoy seeing the creativity in front of my eyes. However, I doze off and think about things that are outside of shopping when I do not want to. To keep myself concentrated, I would go to the calculator app in my cell phone and calculate the sale price. I calculate the sale prices to see how the malls, stores, and businesses are flourishing these days.
Whenever I see the discount signs, I start right away with my calculations on my cell phone. I usually prefer using a calculator instead of my phone, but it would be a hassle to bring the calculator. It will not fit in my small pockets. Maybe it can fit in a purse, but sometimes, I do not bring my purse when it is not needed. If it was at school or college, then bringing a calculator will not be a hassle.
Sometimes, there is a sale price on a shelf, so that customers and calculators like me do not need to go through the trouble of calculating the sale prices with their discounts. I usually forget what the list says, so I just calculate the sale prices in my cell phone. I believe that the sale price list is very unreliable. After all, using a calculator is faster than going back to look at the sale price list.
Calculating discounts at the store is now my favorite part of mathematics. It is okay if there are people who do not like discounts because it can get confusing with decimals, percent, and calculations. Not everyone likes math which is also understandable.
I wonder if there are jobs where people can just calculate the sale price for the customers. The customers just have to ask someone to calculate the discount for them. When the day is over, the workers get paid just for doing this area of mathematics. I would not mind, but I think that there might be times when a job like this is unreliable. Customers can bring their own calculators or cell phones to calculate it. Whatever. What matters is that the sale price can be found by anyone. The sale prices are always disguised as the original price and the discount is there as a hint to find them.
