Polycarp, mhendo: Okay, I’m probably wrong. The $2 bills were in payment for a debt he’d already incurred and under the law mhendo’s cite quoted it seems that Bolesta may actually be in the right.
However, the state may have laws about how much small currency a business is obligated to accept in payment of a debt, and Best Buy (maybe not the corporate HQ, maybe just that specific store) could have its own policy about what kind of currency it’s willing to accept. Even mhendo’s cite says that legal tender is a valid offer, and that the offer doesn’t have to be accepted.
My argument is down but not out. We need more facts.
As a final note, the legality of tacking on fees like that contrary to a prior oral agreement is somewhere between scummy and outright fraud. It’s completely orthogonal to the discussion about legal tender we’re having here, though.
Well, all questions of legality aside, i’m willing to bet that this whole episode was NOT, in fact, a product of Best Buy corporate policy; it seems more likely to me that it was the result of a moronic cashier and an even more stupid and self-righteous manager.
Imagine, if you would, our hero enters the loud, minimally staffed retail emporium. He proceeds to find the DVD he was searching for, and goes to pay. Upon reaching the cashier drone after an indeterminate wait, he decides to have a little fun. Since the total with tax is 20.95, out comes Jackson and Jefferson.
This proved to be a little much for the bottle-blond, facially pierced, gum chewing drone. She managed to give back the change the register told her to, (and Og knows she could not have figured it out herself…) but was then left with the insurmountable problem of WHERE in the till to place the bill.
Our hero exits, whistling at the chaos he so easily caused, as the fourth staffer showed up to figure out where the bill went.
/meek voice “But where does it GO??!!!” /meek voice
Is there a lot of money to be made by counterfeiting $2 bills?
I must admit I don’t have much experience with them. They seem more like a novelty than a convenient method of payment. We used to get them at the race track when I was a kid. Sometimes the tooth fairy would leave them in exchange for teeth.
I’ve known a lot of skeevy people in my day, but I’ve never run across anyone who would take the time to counterfeit $2 dollar bills. $20s yes, but not $2s.
The major problem with your theory, walrus, is that a counterfeited five isn’t gonna get a second look, whereas most people are going to look very closely at a counterfeited two. How often do you see a $2 bill? I haven’t seen one in years, and if one passed my way, I’d look closely for the sheer novelty of it.
I’m curious about a related issue: I work for a humane society/animal shelter, and a few years ago an angry guy paid his $100 (or something) impoundment fee for his dog entirely in pennies. Not rolled or anything: he just brought in a gigantic tubful of pennies and slapped it down, and we accepted it, having no idea whether it was the right amount of money.
Could we legally have turned away his payment? Could we have required him to roll the pennies? Could we have required him to take it to the bank and exchange it for bills?
I see this as more of an indictment on the Baltimore education system than Best Buy.
But there is also an issue of smearing ink on a two dollar bill. Granted, the only reason the idiot checked the bill was because she thought it was fake, but when checked it appeared to be smeared. I think I’ll blame the Secret Service on that little snafu, for not communicating that to folks responsible for checking those bills.
Heh! Given that it sat around for months before we finally scammed a volunteer into agreeing to count and roll it for us, that woulda been pretty great. But then we woulda had an angry smelly* guy in our office for months, which woulda sucked.
Daniel
I wasn’t there, so I don’t know that he was smelly. But I bet he was.
Playing that game, I would have paid entirely in old, crumpled $1 bills all turned in different directions. It would have been worth the wait for the drone to turn them all the right way before putting them in the drawer.
I find it worrysome that people don’t know what a 2 dollar is. We’re one of the richest nations in the world, there’s simply no excuse. I’ll let one person go if they’re unfamiliar, but a whole fucking store?
Holy fucking christ.
I feel the need to cash in and get a bunch of 2 dollar bills, this is gonna be great.
