Take on arithmetic

I grab dinner the other day on my way home from a take-out place I had not yet been to. I order my dinner, a philly cheese steak wrap, a piece of chicken breast and a medium ginger-ale and was rung up for $11.86. I dig through the bills in my wallet and present the dude running the register who I guess is the owner with a $20 bill and he rings up the transaction which shows he owes me $8.14. As he's ringing it up I realize I have two singles and ask him to make the change out of $22 instead of $20 so that I would get one bill instead of a stack of single back
He looks very distraught and says 'I already rang it up like this'. He wasn't angry but just seemed confused to why this would be something I wanted.

So there I stood with enough singles in hand to keep myself busy at FD's for about 10 minutes and while that seemed like a good way to kill a Monday Night I decided against it..
You know that as a country we have fallen behind when a adult can't do basic mathematics but also that he doesn't realize we are both better off my way since restaurants are always looking for small bills while consumers prefer larger single bills.
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