Ordinary Nothing

I had to go to the pharmacy yesterday to take out some prescription. I arrived only about half an hour before official closing time, and this was a large central pharmacy, so there was a long line of people there.

Since they often have more customers than clerks (Yes, yes, they’re "pharmacists", and studies long and hard for it. Sure. But these days they don’t make prescription drugs, just take bought boxes off the shelves and give them to people. The only actual requirement is being literate) they have a queue system in place.

Near the entrance there’s a dispenser with a paper roll of sequential numbered tags. And next to the counter there’s a small electric billboard showing the next number to get services. Pretty common stuff. But the billboard only has a two-digit display. The numbered paper tags go to three digits.

I didn’t have any problem with it. I took out number 608, and the board showed 67. I never doubted that it means my turn is in about 41 people.

Other people seed to have a problem with it, and were not able to grasp the simple mechanics of number overflow over the hundred’s digit. Again and again (and again) someone would take a number and stare entirely puzzled at the billboard, until another person told them that "once it gets to one hundred it will roll back and start again". Then they’d sigh a long "Ahhhh" of understanding, mutter about how long they have to wait, and find a place to wait in.

The fact that so many people constantly were unable to realise that indeed the lower two-digit numbers will return, I found quite sad.
The fact that so many other people kept telling them "one hundred" I found somewhat sadder. The numbered tickets had the number on them! it was six hundred and something. There are only two ways to look at it:

 
1. The billboard shows only two digits. It will only reach to 99, and then start again. It can’t show a hundred, so it will never reach it.
 
2. The billboard shows the last two digits of the whole number. It will reach 600, not 100, it went over 100 nearly 500 people ago.

And yet nobody merely said that the numbers will return, they all said 100. ALL.

On a different side note, I was once at the same pharmacy when there were about 90 people waiting… This is very close to having 100 people waiting… In which case two people are going to come to the counter claiming it’s their turn whenever the billboard progresses…

February 5th, 2005 at 12:36 EET | Categories: Miscellaneous | Track comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.