# Are young people taught to give change this way? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 2, 2013, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424 "2013-07-02T05:02:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/41 "2013-07-02T21:51:15Z")
I’ve never been at a till that simply had a yawning abyss all around it. I would like a diagram of one of these places that doesn’t have any space for you to move to the side to deal with your change. ---
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/42 "2013-07-02T21:57:06Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > I’ll second this one. (Though my favorite example is the commercial where the woman is using a knife like she has no bones in her wrist.) I’ll third it. When I worked at McDonalds in the early 90s they told us to do bills first and then change so the bills don’t fly away. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/43 "2013-07-02T22:10:21Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > I’ve never been at a till that simply had a yawning abyss all around it. I would like a diagram of one of these places that doesn’t have any space for you to move to the side to deal with your change. It’s in the upcoming _Indiana Jones and the Grocery Line of Despair_. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/44 "2013-07-02T22:19:08Z")
> [@KneadToKnow](#): > > It’s in the upcoming _Indiana Jones and the Grocery Line of Despair_. “Nickles. Why’d it have to be nickles?” 😛 ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/45 "2013-07-02T22:32:41Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > I’ve never been at a till that simply had a yawning abyss all around it. I would like a diagram of one of these places that doesn’t have any space for you to move to the side to deal with your change. No, it doesn’t have a yawning abyss all around it . It has stuff around it. An example of one- the counter is about three and a half feet to four feet wide. On one side of the counter is a wall and on the other side are a soda cooler and ice cream display placed perpendicularly to the counter. On that _maybe_ four foot wide counter are two cash registers , a tip jar , and a napkin/straw dispenser. There’s barely room for the cashier to put my purchases down- there’s no space for me to move my purchase over and deal with the change. There’s not even space for me to move myself over and not hold up the line.There are other places that have slightly more floor space but still little counter space, as all but two feet or so of the counter is taken up by displays. ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/46 "2013-07-02T22:47:01Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > it never failed that about 5% of the customers felt it imperative that they stop to explain to me how it should “obviously” be done. I just wanted to say: _Look people, I’m a cashier. I’m here because I have two hours to kill between chemistry and calculus and making minimum wage on campus makes more sense than a long evening shift somewhere else. I do what I’m told and they didn’t ask for my opinion. Why do you want to make everyone miserable just because we don’t do it the way you learned during the Depression?!_ I’m sure you’d get 5% complaining no matter which way you did it. I do make it a point not to tell people how to do stuff they do all day long, every day. I’m sure they’ve had plenty of advice already. ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/47 "2013-07-02T23:33:36Z")
I worked indoors, in a place largely free of intense gusting winds. I should add, though, that our notes are polymer, not paper. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2013, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/48 "2013-07-03T00:05:07Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > To me, “I can’t handle putting coins into my pocket if they’re on top of bills” sounds like the sort of problem experienced only by the type of people who appear in informercials and show off how mind-bogglingly difficult it is for them to drain pasta, open a carton of milk, or use a blanket. I’ll admit that I’m clumsy, but I am reporting my experience. 🆒 Also, disposing of the change would be easy with two hands free, but that is often _not an option_ at the convenience stores I shop at – the checkout counters are so crowded (with chewing gum or condom displays!) that if I’m buying more than a single bag’s worth, _the checker will have already handed me a bag to hold_, to clear space. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2013, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/49 "2013-07-03T01:58:15Z")
> [@Eliahna](#): > > 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. Anyone at my employer handing out flat pieces of paper and then dropping coins on top of them to bounce and roll away will be reprimanded. The solution to a customer not grasping the bills is to continue to hold the bills until the customer realizes that they need to take action and close their hand around the bills. On the other hand, dropping coins onto the stack of flat bills gets even more dicey when the customer closes their hand on the bills, increasing the chance that the coins will not even find a flat surface on which to settle and will bounce sideways onto the countertop and the floor. > [@Eliahna](#): > > 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. Your opinion is in error. Dropping wads of cash onto a customer’s hand came into practice at exactly the time that cash registers began displaying the change after subtracting the totalled bill from the amount tendered. It can pretty well be dated to the period between 1975 and 1985, (depending on how quickly any given merchant upgraded from mechanical registers to electronic ones). It actually was an issue in training in that cashiers trained in the early 1970s or earlier “naturally” counted back change from coins up to larger bills so that they would have a clue regarding how much to hand the customer while cashiers trained later would frequently complain about having to count back change when “the machine tells me how much to hand back.” ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2013, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/50 "2013-07-03T02:10:14Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > > [@bob\_2](#): > > > > 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. > > Is it really the case that the register aims to keep an exact count of bills and coins of all denominations? If so, there would (for example) have to be a way for the teller to distinguish between $30 paid in the form of three $10 bills or one $10 and two $20 bills. And it would be a big problem if the person who is owed $1.25 in change said “Could I have that in quarters, for the parking meter?” > > Put me down as skeptical whether at the end of a shift anything more than the total matters. They may do this in banks, where tracking the actual coinage/currency is important, but I have never seen a retail register that cared. (Even stores where they have rules against “making change,” (to prevent inexperienced cashiers from being taken by quick change artists), the cashiers need to “buy change” throughout the day and I have never seen anyone actually ring up the “sale” of rolls of coins and packs of singles for the twenties and fifties that have been received.) ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2013, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/51 "2013-07-03T03:15:50Z")
I think I noticed a nearly simultaneous change at most vendors: They drop bills in my hand, oriented the same way my hand is oriented, Then the receipt, Then the coins, All too rapidly for me to put any of it away, Then turn to the next customer which suggests to me I’m already holding things up with my one hand full of packages and my other hand loaded with money I can’t grab without spilling. It so accurately follows a prescription for awkwardness that I can’t help suspecting it is some kind of comedy skit. ---
**Author:** ![tonyfop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/85f322/32.png) [@tonyfop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tonyfop)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2013, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/52 "2013-07-03T04:25:21Z")
I have a question for all of the people in the “Count Up” camp. I do not like to have gobs of coins in my pocket. When I buy something, I like to add coins so that I get a more manageable amount of change. An example is my lunches at McD’s. What I get for lunch adds up to $4.76. I naturally pay $5.01, so that I get a quarter back instead of two dimes and four pennies. I know this is an easy example, but if the bill is $5.66, and someone hands you $10.16, how does your “Count Up” method account for this? ---
**Author:** ![actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e79b87/32.png) [@actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/actualliberalnotoneofthose)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2013, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/53 "2013-07-03T04:34:08Z")
This “counting up” thing seems unnecessarily complicated and backwards compared to simple subtraction, assuming one has to calculate the change. It makes sense but has added steps and just seems odd to someone not specifically trained to approach it that way. ---
**Author:** ![MacCat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maccat/32/216_2.png) [@MacCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacCat)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2013, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/54 "2013-07-03T04:36:29Z")
Ring up the items. State the total. (6.75) State the amount tendered. “Out of twenty” Place the bill(s) **on** the money drawer. Hand over the quarter, “seven”. Count the bills aloud into the customer’s hand, “three is ten, ten is twenty”. Hand the receipt and say “Thank You”. Place the bill(s) **in** the drawer. ---
**Author:** ![MacCat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maccat/32/216_2.png) [@MacCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacCat)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2013, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/55 "2013-07-03T04:45:00Z")
> [@tonyfop](#): > > What I get for lunch adds up to $4.76. I naturally pay $5.01, so that I get a quarter back instead of two dimes and four pennies. I know this is an easy example, but if the bill is $5.66, and someone hands you $10.16, how does your “Count Up” method account for this? I would say 5.66 out of 10.16, hand them .50 and say six, hand them four singles and say ten. You giving the .16 shows you know the arithmetic. ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2013, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/56 "2013-07-03T08:48:31Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > 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. Way back in the good old days when cashiers had to calculate the change themselves I overheard a girl, most probably a high school student earning some extra money while on summer holiday, excuse herself, saying that they only used calculators at school and never had to do it in their heads. ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2013, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/57 "2013-07-04T00:15:42Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Anyone at my employer handing out flat pieces of paper and then dropping coins on top of them to bounce and roll away will be reprimanded. The solution to a customer not grasping the bills is to continue to hold the bills until the customer realizes that they need to take action and close their hand around the bills. On the other hand, dropping coins onto the stack of flat bills gets even more dicey when the customer closes their hand on the bills, increasing the chance that the coins will not even find a flat surface on which to settle and will bounce sideways onto the countertop and the floor. > > Your opinion is in error. > > Dropping wads of cash onto a customer’s hand came into practice at exactly the time that cash registers began displaying the change after subtracting the totalled bill from the amount tendered. It can pretty well be dated to the period between 1975 and 1985, (depending on how quickly any given merchant upgraded from mechanical registers to electronic ones). It actually was an issue in training in that cashiers trained in the early 1970s or earlier “naturally” counted back change from coins up to larger bills so that they would have a clue regarding how much to hand the customer while cashiers trained later would frequently complain about having to count back change when “the machine tells me how much to hand back.” Total rings up to $9.35. Customer hands me a $20 note. I open my till and a) Count up. 5c, 10c, 50c with my left hand, $10 bill and receipt with my right. Place receipt, note in outstretched hand and say “That’s 10 dollars…” and then add coins on top and say “… and 65 cents change, and your receipt. Thank you”. Or b) Look at the change due on the screen and count down. Receipt and $10 bill with my right hand, 50c, 10c, 5c with my left. Place receipt, note in outstretched hand and say “That’s 10 dollars…” and then add coins on top and say “… and 65 cents change, and your receipt. Thank you”. I don’t see how counting up or down affects how I give change. Then again, I used to amuse myself by totaling the purchases in my head as I scanned because it’s a long, boring day if you don’t find small games to amuse yourself with, so I don’t consider myself the kind of cashier who lives and dies by the machine’s reckoning. Again, I’m going from my own experience. I was never taught how to give change, but this is the method that I found most effective so I stuck with it. Someone occasionally gives you a dirty look no matter how you do it because there are always people married to “only right way” (see: toilet paper, over or under). ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2013, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/58 "2013-07-04T04:44:25Z")
I do not care how one counts out the change. As long as it it accurate, everyone should be happy. I do object to the odd notion that dropping coins onto flat pieces of paper, (even to “weight them down”), would ever be consistently successful. Unless the bill is fifteen years old and has the flexibility of tissue paper, it is going to be stiff enough for coins to roll off of it. As soon as the fingers begin to curl around the paper to grasp it, the paper is going to change angles and let the coins slide down and off the bills. ---
**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2013, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/59 "2013-07-05T19:53:54Z")
> [@Klaatu](#): > > 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. And I prefer coins last. Easier to slide them off the bills into my other hand and put them in my pocket, then the bills into my wallet. Can’t please everyone either way they go. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424/60 "2013-07-06T01:08:52Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > 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. It’s that good old German efficiency. As a professional cook, I’ve gotten in the habit of _never_ handing things directly to another person. Instead, I set it down and let them pick it up themselves. Why? Because the moment of handing something to another person is the mostly likely point at which the item will be dropped, usually because the giver lets go before the receiver has established a grip. When the object in question is hot or sharp, you don’t want to be dropping it. So I can see the logic in placing the money on the counter and letting the other person pick it up. It’s less likely to get dropped. > [@tomndebb](#): > > Dropping wads of cash onto a customer’s hand came into practice at exactly the time that cash registers began displaying the change after subtracting the totalled bill from the amount tendered. I got my first cash register job in 1983, and we had the modern digital registers that calculated the change. But I was still trained to “count up” the change, and continued to do it that way at all my future cash register jobs. To clarify, I would take the change out of the till based on what the display told me, but then I would “count up” as I handed it to the customer. It was a nice double-check to confirm that I’d counted the correct change out of the till. I credit the method for the fact that 99% of the time my end-of-shift register total was correct down the penny. I never had a register come up more than a dollar off. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-young-people-taught-to-give-change-this-way/662424.md?page=4)