The lady at the liquor store gave me a puzzled look. It's a mom and pop shop. She's mom. Pop just left. Both Indian immigrants around 60. There are half a dozen large photos of their swami looking down on you. That's one ugly swami, but I digress... "The cash register is broken!" OK, I know about that kind of thing. At least it's not a bar code operation where you need the computer system to tell you the prices. The price is on the bag of chips and the six-pack I picked up. No big deal. Just add it up and take my money. Here's a twenty. You've got an adding machine don't you? Her head nodded sideways. OK. No big deal either. Pencil and paper. It's consumeable so you don't even have to do the tax. There's probably a deposit or something on the bottles for the state, but she had never bothered with it before so I didn't try and complicate things by mentioning it. She struggled with the numbers but came up with something that looked reasonable. Then she froze completely. A minute went by. Uhm, is everything OK? Can I get my change? Then it occurred to me what the problem was. She didn't have a clue how to make change. I thought I should break the impasse. You said $12.07. So you owe me $7.93 back. She said thank you and I shook my head as I walked away. In my shoppe this kind of event would have been at most a minor irritant. She's got a major crisis on her hands. The smartest thing for her to do is lock the door and go home.