This seems like a good place to gripe about Golden Corral commercials.
They repeatedly say, over and over, that it’s all for ‘About ten bucks’.
It’s not. It’s 11.50, not including tax.
How the HELL do they get ‘About ten bucks’ out of 11.50? And these aren’t old commercials, and I don’t live in Vegas or New York or anywhere else metropolitan; there is no excuse. It’s a flat out lie, and pisses me off. Not that I care for Golden Corral anyway, but went there with my sweetie and the kids and am still pissed about the pricing thing a year later.
Why? I’m not going to rely solely on an “about” claim before executing a transaction. Presumably an actual price is going to be listed somewhere before I make any purchase.
I’m 31 and I remember a couple of penny-gumball machines as a kid. They were probably operating at a loss though.
Not a vending machine, but I think the Chicago tollway booths recognized pennies while they still existed.
My point with the vending machines though, is that if you have an entire industry saying even if you are giving us money it’s not worth our storage space and time to go pick it up. Just an additional indicator on how silly the penny is.
Parking meters don’t even take pennies, and I can’t remember ever seeing one that did. Many meters take credit cards now, but still no pennies. So there’s your government rejecting legal tender.
Ballparking is actually not a bad way to keep track of frequent purchases. I’m not going to go hunting for them, but there are some reports that people who ballpark figures do better at estimating total figures than people who obsessively track every last penny.
They probably are not including the price of a drink, even though very few people drink water at restaurants. I haven’t seen this ad, nor have I been to Golden Corral in years…but I do remember that the price of drinks wasn’t included with the price of a meal.
OP: Your Dunkin’ Donuts server is Gus Gorman and I claim my… penny. Actually, keep it.
I’ve had cashiers just keep the penny or two change a couple of times and it was just a bit disconcerting. Then again, there have been times when the cashier has let me off a penny, so it evens out.
I have a way round this - most of the places where I’d pay in cash have a charity tin on the counter, so I just say ‘put the change in the charity tin’ as I hurry out the door, so I’m not only important but philanthropic too.
You know what’s great? When stores have that automatic robocoin dispensatron contraption that vomits your change out into a little cup. You can just walk away from the three pennies or whatever without causing a lot of grief. If the change is 79 cents, you can fish out your wheat and leave the chaff behind.
In this way, the tray becomes a little take-a-penny kitty.
You should actually report this to management. One reason for making prices X.99 is so that the cashier will need to make change, which means they have to ring up the sale.
Whole dollar amounts make it much easier for the cashier to not ring the sale and pocket the money.
