Not a rant, just a question. I am 54 and many of you will remember how change was counted out at retail establishments back in the day. The cash register person would verbally count your bills and coins to you and always hand you the coins first, Then the bills.
Nowadays I am almost always handed the bills with no count and then the coins which will flop off the bills onto the ground. I am curious to hear from younger people who are cashiers if you are taught to give change this way.
Not a direct answer to your question, but an explanation of what you’ve observed:
“Back in the day” the scheme was to count up from the amount owed to the amount paid - so coins are given first to make a whole dollar amount, then single dollars (if needed), then larger bills.
Nowadays, cash registers (are they still called that?) nearly always accept the input of an amount tendered, subtract the amount of the sale, and show the amount to be returned to the customer. The logical way to pay that is big bills, then small bills, then coins.
Thank you! I never thought of it in that way, but it makes sense. I still want my coins first though. 
I will call that asked and answered unless anyone else wants to cash in.
I am 90% sure we did not get told how to give change when I worked in a retail store in 1995. There were a million other things to teach us.
No one showed me how to give change. I figured out for myself that notes first, coins last was the best way after handing people their notes last and seeing them drop them because they didn’t grasp them, they just held their hand out and waited for the notes to be deposited on top… then glared at me like I was the idiot because they failed at grasping.
The whole theory that it’s related to counting up or down to make the change is bogus, in my opinion. It’s all about people standing there like stuffed clods, without sense enough to even close their hand to stop notes blowing away. The coins are to weight them down.
When I worked retail my training was to put me in front of the register. The end. I don’t even think they showed me that you enter amount tendered than change. It was just obvious.
In short, we weren’t taught anything. We just did it.
We absolutely were not taught when I was in retail. To the best of my recollection I was the only cashier (that i worked with) that did it this way. It made more sense to me - and I appreciated when others did it (which was a very small percentage). To the best of my knowledge/memory no customer ever said anything about. I’m pretty sure I had a couple customers drop their change when I did it the “normal” way - which is probably what caused me to change, but I am not sure.
I would do it in two motions. Hand them their change - then the bills. I always worked indoors and wind was never an issue.
I worked retail/restaurant cash registers at various points between 2007 and 2011. What Xema said is correct. Sometimes, I would type the wrong amount of cash in, or the customer would change what bill they were giving me, and then I would subtract the dollar amount in my head. I would still give them the bills first, then the change. There were two advantages to this: first, the coins would weigh down the bills and stop the customer from dropping them or them blowing away. Second, sometimes I did not have every denomination available, so I would give them as many singles, say, as possible and then make up the difference with quarters, in an effort to give them the biggest possible bills without refilling my drawer constantly.
Some cashiers I worked with would do it differently (usually a little older, but not always). They’d verbally count out the change, doing the change first. So if you gave them a 20 and the bill was 18.75, it would be “19[hands you a quarter], 20[hands you a single]” When I go to pay my electric bill at the office, the lady there does it like this, and she’s around my age (early 20s).
Well, when I worked retail (early 90s) I was taught to count change that way. The cash register didn’t tell you how much change to give, so you had to calculate it yourself. So I was taught this way:
Order total is $7.33
Customer pays with a $20 bill.
I give change by counting from 7.33 up to 20 in steps. 67 cents makes $8, plus two makes $10, plus ten makes $20.
Not that I couldn’t have just calculated the total change at once, but some people struggle with even basic math like that and I think the counting method made it easier for them.
As Xema said, today most registers calculate the change for you, so it’s more natural for the cashier to start with the bills and then grab the coins.
I read somewhere (probably a previous thread on this very board) that it’s a male/female thing. A woman will place her purse on the sales counter, open the wallet inside it, and extract the cash. When she gets the change with the coins on top, she can just let the coins slide off it into the open wallet, then put the bills away and be on her way.
I don’t want the coins on top of the bills. Either I slide the coins from one hand to the other (if it’s free), or I have to crumple all the money into a ball with the coins in the center. If a cashier hands me the bills first, I try to take them between my fingers and then take the coins in my palm.
We could dispense with the whole issue if we did things the German way. I noticed at stores there that the customers and cashiers don’t really hand the money back and forth. They always lay it on the counter; there’s even an indentation for the change. I always wondered if it’s a social taboo to avoid contact with with people.
Exactly. The art of giving change has been lost, for the most part. The whole point of the “counting up” method is that you don’t need to do any mental arithmetic, or at least not any subtraction. You just count upwards until you get to a round number, and hand over the coins as you go.
That sort of cash register has been around for over 30 years, but the "bills first then change"method is much more recent. And the variation I usually encounter is not easier for the cashier - I get “take the bills and change out of the drawer,pull the receipt off, pile the bills on top of the receipt and then the coins on top of the bills” and the whole pile is handed to me all at once.
Same way in Japan: there’ s a small tray on the counter for you to put your payment in, regardless of whether it’s coins, bills, or a credit card. Cashier places change (or CC) onto the tray and pushes the tray toward you.
The better way of counting up:
$7.33, 34 35 (pennies), 40 (nickel), 50 (dime), Eight dollar (two quarters), Ten (two dollars), twenty (a ten). No subtraction involved and you hand the coins first so they don’t fall. It can be picked up in half a day.
Yeah, we didn’t get taught to count out anything, since the register tells you. When our POS went down, my god it was awful.
And there is a special place in hell for the people who give you three dimes, a penny, and a Kennedy half dollar because what they want back, but will not tell you, is a quarter, a five billion dollar Zimbabwean note, and a Mercury dime. And if you don’t give it to them they get all pissy because clearly this is obvious to them.
It’s a good thing the registers tell cashiers what the change is because I’m fairly certain that most of them could not do the math themselves. The worst example of this I’ve seen was at the local farmers’ market. I asked for two orders of fish and chips at $6 each. First the teenaged girl could not figure out what the total would be and had to ask her mother. Then she was completely flummoxed when I gave her a $20 bill. She held it like it was a snake and turned to her mother, whining plaintively: “He gave me twenty dollars.” Her mother said “So give him his change; what’s twenty minus twelve?” Blank stare. :smack:
Seems to me they changed to the stupid way of doing things about 15 years ago. Everyone sems to have changed at the same time, so I suspect some marvellous new “management method” at work. The 90’s were notorious for management consultants telling you how to improve your business efficiency (i.e. lay off more staff).
Worse, they flop the receipt on top before the coins. This makes it awkward to put the coins in the wallet, and this annoying receipt in the way makes it impossible to put away the bills easily. As a result, I stuff the whole thing in my pocket and sort out the mess when I get home.
With the need for mental arithmetic declining (because the cash register does the subtraction) so is the ability to do it. I had this happen a few days ago:
Total cost of items was $15.31. I hand the teller a $20 bill, then say “I think I have some change”, and quickly dig out three dimes and a penny. But I was just a bit slow - she has already entered $20 as the amount tendered.
She is now flummoxed. The register says I’m owed $4.69 from $20, but she doesn’t know how to change the amount tendered to $20.31, and (having no habit of practice) has no ability to figure the amount I’m owed in her head. She calls over another teller who also can’t do the mental arithmetic, but who does know the multiple keystrokes that allow the amount tendered to be re-entered.
I worked retail in the mid-90s and wasn’t taught anything other than how to operate the register and how many coupons each little old lady could use at one time. Oh, and what to do with checks. God, that was a complicated procedure.
To be fair, the problem may not have been the arithmetic but the need for the till to have the correct information. If they had not corrected it then the printout at the end of the shift would have registered the wrong amount of coins and notes, even though the total was correct.