Dispatches from Philadelphia (file under "Ives")

[tahnan]

The most well known play from "All in the Timing" is "The Philadelphia," which is about a man who thinks he is just having a bad day, only to be informed by his friend that he has actually fallen into a metaphysical hole called a Philadelphia. In a Philadelphia everything goes wrong: the taxis don't take you where you want to go, the newsstands don't sell your newspaper, and no matter what you order at a restaurant, you'll end up with a cheesesteak. -from Wikipedia, "David Ives"

So I stopped by the food court in the building next to my office to get lunch. The food is surprisingly decent; but the last two times I went there I was overcharged. (Once, a double-charge for a coke; once, a double-charge for "protein", i.e. the chicken in the chicken nachos.) This time, I felt ready: this order got placed at the electronic kiosk, which helpfully printed out a receipt:

• Subtotal: $4.69
• Tax: $0.33
• Total: $5.01

"I've got them now," I thought. "I'm not buying anything but this, so here I am, with my $5.01 ready. If she tries to charge me for the wrong thing, or she reads '$5.01' and punches it in and charges me that plus tax, or whatever, I'm ready."

Finally, I had my food and went to the cashier, who rang it in. "$5.02," she told me.

"Er--" I said. "This receipt said $5.01..."

"There's tax," she said. "$5.02."

And as I fumbled around for another penny, I took another look at the tax. $4.69, plus $0.33 tax, is...kind of pretty much not the $5.01 that was printed on the receipt I was holding.

Who the hell programs a machine to add wrong?

Comments

[kirbyk.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's a hard mistake to make.

My theory is that it's rounding up in one place, correctly realizing that there's no fractional cents in the tax, but just doing that at display time, and then truncating for the display of the total.

Because the inability to do addition in software is just too frightening to bear the thought of.

[touchstone.livejournal.com]

Yeah, clearly it's rounding up to the 0.33. Equally clearly, it's not adding the rounded value to the sale price; it's adding the full fractional value and then rounding again (down instead of up).

Inquiring minds want to know, Tahnan. Your assignment tomorrow is to buy something such that the calculated tax should round down (say, a total of $4.75 or so) and see what the receipt says :)

Maybe they have a rounding algorithm that says 'round to the nearest odd # of cents'. It'd be silly, but that doesn't always stop people....

[(Anonymous)]

Since when is "The Philadelphia" the best-known play in "All in the Timing"? I've never even seen that one performed.

[kirbyk.livejournal.com]

I don't really know what's the most well known play, but I have seen The Philadelphia performed more than any other. That would be twice, once at a college collection of one acts, and another at a particular Ives night, where they did most of All in the Timing (including Phillip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread, which I appreciated since I can't really read music well enough to fully get the joke in text form. Well, I got the joke, but not how really brilliant it turns out to be.)

For what anecdotal evidence is worth and all that, but I figure signed anecdotal that agrees with the original poster beats anonymous comments. :-)

[davidglasser.livejournal.com]

That was my reaction too; in my first act of Wikipedia grumpiness, I mentioned something about it on the discussion page.

(In my second act of Wikipedia grumpiness, I deleted some random production of Words, Words, Words from the Words, Words, Words page.)

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Hey, I don't write this stuff, I just quote it. We report, you decide.

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

The original (inadvertently anonymous) comment about The Philadelphia was me. Maybe they don't do that one so much on the west coast.

On the other hand, the assertion is at least undermined by a passage a few paragraphs down: "Among the best-known of his one-act comedies are Sure Thing, Words, Words, Words, Variations on the Death of Trotsky, Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread, and The Universal Language."

I actually considered deleting the part about The Philadelphia, since it's not only unsubstantiated but doesn't really fit in that spot in the article. But then I decided it was rather rude to delete something that had just been linked to.

[jofish22.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Fascinating.

I can only assume that they're calculating

$4.69 x 0.06 PA sales tax = 0.2814
+
4.69 x 0.01 Philly and Pittsburg supplement = 0.0469
=
0.3283 = 0.33

but if you round them down, in that Being Good To Your Customer way, before adding them up, instead of being smart about it, you get

0.28 + 0.04 = 0.32 tax.

Which I agree, still makes no sense. But none the less.

[jofish22.livejournal.com]

WAIT! The machine wasn't made by Diebold, was it?

Bah!

[speaks.livejournal.com]

You stole my joke.

[spenceraloysius.livejournal.com]

Unions.

[mwerble.livejournal.com]

I worked at SixFlagsGreatAdventure while I was in high school and we sold various things (cotton candy, ice cream) that was 41.89 (I believe) which came to $2.00 with tax. Unfortunately, TWO of them came to $4.01. This drove every cashier and every customer absolutely crazy. I heard that a few years later they added buttons to the registers for 2 cotton candies and 3 cotton candies; I guess enough people complained.

[dr_whom]

You think the Houston Market is a Philadelphia, wait till you try to buy SEPTA tokens.