Did you ever learn to make change this way?

My dad bought a news store when I was 9 1/2. When I was 10 THAT was how I was taught to make change. In those days, it was an electro-mechanical register. Not digital. Lucky for me, in Delaware there was no sales tax.

To those puzzled by the OP’s question, on today’s computerized digital cash registers, after you enter the items being bought, you ender how much cash was tendered (how much money the customer handed you) and the register tells you now much change to give. Cashiers don’t need to anbd often don’t know how to add and subtract. Try giving a cashier $10.12 for a $7.62 total purchase and see what happens.

Yup. You put the $10 bill on the shelf in plain sight so the customer can’t say they actually gave you a $20 bill. Then you start taking out pennies to get to the next 5 cents if needed, then dimes and nickels to get to the next 25 cents, then 1s, 5s, 10s, etc. to bring you up to the total. Of course now the [del]robot overlord[/del] cash register tells you how much change to give.

That’s exactly how I learned to do it and it was all the way back in grade school (I believe 5th or 6th grade) when we learned how to address envelopes, handle money, and a lot of other current (back then) life skills.

This applies to my experience also.

I was taught to make change that way at home playing Monopoly with my older siblings. Later my fourth grade teacher taught us that method. Nowadays I’m better with mental math and can usually do the subtraction in my head faster than by counting up.

Apparently children are no longer taught the counting-up method. My nieces and nephews can’t play Monopoly without a calculator, and yet they always insist on being the banker. And they are highly resistant to letting me teach them the counting-up method because they say it’s “easier” their way.

I have found that if you do not understand what the customer wants in this situation, you won’t be behind a Quick Trip™ register. Most excellent & consistent company…
They get it and are fast & accurate in my experience.

I learned to count up like that working at the concession stand at a movie theatre. Not only that, at that time there were no cash registers, just tills, so all purchases were added up in the head and change made the same way.

I learned how to count change back that way (the OP’s way, I mean) during high school working at Anderson’s Pharmacy after school.

I prefer it counted back to me that was but I’m also OK with:

“Here’s your change” and handing me

• two $1 bills, which I wrap my fingers around
• then all the loose change which goes separately into the palm of my hand

or the change first and the bills last. It’s all good: I dump the change into my pants pocket then slide the bills into my wallet.

The only thing that drives me absolutely batshit INSANE is when some $^@#!# cashier give me a “receipt sandwich”:

• two $1 bills
• then the goddamn receipt
• then the change on top of that

Now I’ve got to put down anything in my other hand — this just became a more complex operation.

• put the change in the other hand.
• remove the receipt and do something with it — discard it or stick it in a pants pocket.
• put the bills in the wallet
• put the change in a pants pocket
• pick up the grocery bag I had to put down

I learned it from my mom, who’d worked in retail for years. I didn’t care what the register showed as change due, I counted change with every customer, even in the express lane. Other checkers’ registers seldom balanced. Mine always did.

When I was a pizza delivery dude I would have given you your 2 bucks first. I just rounded it up to the next dollar amount immediately, so your 7.35 became 8 bucks. Here’s 2, that’s your 10. That was easier for me to grapple with, I don’t like any math, even simple addition.
Then, I’d count up from .35 just how you had it.

It’s 7.35 and you hand me a 10. It’s been ages since I worked a register, but I would first take out a nickel and a dime to get to $7.50. Then 2 quarters and 2 ones. In this scenario I would use the counting up method so to speak.

That’s the way I did it when I had to make my own change. Is there another way?

Funny thing is, I got my working papers as soon as I was able, at 14, and worked at a local pharmacy store where I had to make my own change. In fact, I had to put in the money I got by depressing levers with the denominations I received. You cleared any mistakes with a hook you pulled with your pinky. My next job was at a supermarket where the register showed you the amount of money you needed to give back.

My final teen age job was at a fast food restaurant where there were hardly any numbers at all on the register. No words either. There were pictures of the items that you pressed. You could input how many of each thing with a number or just press the picture the appropriate amount of times. You put in the amount of money given to you and the register told you which bills to hand out and released the coins itself, that the customer collected from a little tray.

My employers thought I got stupider as i got older!

Being a charity that I volunteer at. The prices of food items are set pretty low, because it is mostly kids who are our customers. I brought up at our last meeting that we need to make the prices all round numbers, like $1 or $2 , and cut out the 25 and 50 cent prices. We agreed to do that for basketball season. We have had one game, jeez my life was easier. A few folks complained about the pricing, but most didn’t care. Whew!

That’s how they do it at the Mom & Pop fried chicken joints that only accept cash. I like it too as a customer.

My mom taught me to count back change when I was selling Girl Scout cookies door to door. Now I’m a cashier and I give people their change based on the shape of the missing part. Sounds weird but that’s how I visualize it. The missing part is the shape of two quarters, a dime and a nickel and two dollars.

And it’s a stupid way. The palm forms a natural cup that the change can rest in. Bills are smooth and flat, and the coins always slide off them. It’s worse when you’re in the drive-through and the coins fall outside the car window. If I’m handed bills first, I’ll pull my hand away and tuck them in my pocket, then hold it back out for the coins.

That’s the way I did it in my days working at a convince store and at fast food restaurants, as to being taught that, I guess I was taught that way, by all the cashiers that made change for me.
That was the only way I saw it for years, BTW I was born in 1963, and entered work force at 16.

I’ve only had change counted back to me that way once, in the past 20 years or so.

Sure, that’s what I learned in 1977 or so at my first part time job.

I’m afraid it’s a lost art now.

OP’s way of counting change is correct.

Nobody bothers doing it anymore because the register tells them the exact amount.

Also correct. Handing you the bills first and then stacking the change on top is stupid and a byproduct of not having to count out the change anymore. Some idiot asshole somewhere taught Cashier 0 to do it and it stuck and spread.

I had grown up experiencing change being “counted up”, but never really gave it a whole lot of thought (it was just the way people did it).

In 1978, I took over a friend’s job while he was on vacation, and I had to be taught how to do the “counting up”. Made total sense, and I understood why everyone did it that way.

This method is certainly from the pre-digital cash register days (where the register calculated the change for you), and has been lost on recent generations. Every once in a while someone (using a newer cash register) will attempt to “count up”, and invariable screw it up. It’s kind of comical: 5 (cents) makes “50”, 50 makes 8 dollars, and two makes…um…te…um…$2.55 in change