Simple Mathematics Made Even Simpler for Simpletons

Josefina, this is for you.
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Normally when I see articles about demographics I get excited. Real excited. Very excited. I mean I get more excited than Cheney's on-call medical team after watching Cheney finish off a meal of pork neckbones, chitlins and cornbread. (For those of you who don't know, this is a meal with more than 3000 calories, 2700 of them from fat.)

So I'm reading this article that says today's high schoolers are failing in math, so much so that the government wants to simplify or remove more difficult math from the curriculum. To all of you parents who want to someday retire and live off of your kids, this is a great cause for concern because if you don't make sure Cissy and Bubba can add, their chances of competing in a global market will be as slim as Nicole Richie's arms (what's w/me dropping all the famous names?).

Anyway, this was a great article but it missed one important element--today's business people are no good at math either. How do I know this? By the many call center experiences I endured where you people have demonstrated your inability to add, subtract, multiply and divide. So I'm here to help. Another free, short lesson to help you going forward. For this lesson, you'll need something to write with and paper. Oh never mind, you never have this when you call us do you?

Here we go:

Addition

First, know how to add your charges together. Make sure you've correctly used a counting instrument whether it be a calculator, your eighteen fingers and toes, an abacus or pieces of the crack you smoke. After you've added your charges, make sure the total you have matches the total on your credit card bill. If it does, congratulations! Simply pay the account and you're done 'til the next month's statement.

Subtraction

This is VERY important, especially if you still can't figure your balance (see previous post on finding your balance). It is important that you SUBTRACT your payment and any credits from the OLDEST money on the account. This means all payments and credits are subtracted from the previous balance. We will never subtract money from the NEW balance until the OLD balance has been paid. Please don't call us and say we've not applied your payments and credits and you think we're cheating you. We're already robbing you (see previous post) what cause would we have to cheat you too?

Divide & Multiply

Divide all the times you've paid late or gone over your limit, then multiply it by the amount of late fees and finance charges you're gonna pay in a year. This amount should quickly send you in search of scissors to cut up that card. If that still doesn't worry you, then make sure you call your credit card company to find out what your new finance rate is. Because believe me, paying late will make your interest rate go higher than a split in Toni Braxton's skirt (what is it with me and celebrities tonight?) That's right genuises, late payments equal more money out of your pockets.

Nothing is more exhausting than having to explain to you morons how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. As a matter of fact call center workers have our own mathematical formula: We ADD all the idiots who can't compute a simple mathematical problem, then SUBTRACT from our lives the amount of time we wasted trying to explain to you. We then MULTIPLY our frustration by your displays of lunacy and DIVIDE to figure out how many times we'll use you as an example of why some people shouldn't have credit cards and we'll arrive at our answer--you people really are incredibly stupid!

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So the moral of the story? Two things: make sure Cissy and Bubba are passing their math classes, and please try to figure out your bill before calling and screaming we're cheating you.