When is Your Birfday?

It is common practice at a pharmacy to write the patient's birthday on the prescription they are dropping off to be filled. Why do we need your birthday? So we can make sure the person that we are filling the prescription for is you and not someone else with the same name. I find it odd that two of the most difficult things for me to learn when I started working were:
1. the cash register (that thing is rediculous)
2. how to interpret people's birthdays

You can probably understand why the cash register would be somewhat difficult to get used to, but interpreting birthdays? How hard can that be, right?
When I ask for a birthday I'm expecting your standard reply, "1/7/83" or even "January 7th, 83" would be acceptable. Here are a few things I've heard in the past week.

• "the fifth, the fourth, of 79"
• "next month, fifteenth, 50"
• "first day, sixth month, in the 1963"
• "17th of the 10th month, 1968"

Really?? So, I get these responses and it confuses me and I ask them to to repeat it. Then they look at me like I'm stupid and say it again. "THE FIRST, THE TENTH, 1980." Ok. Got it.

So I've decided that when people give me their birthday in this manner, I'm going to tell them about their prescription the same way. "In the morning take, High blood pressure for, your medicine, refrigerate not." Any questions?"