# Do bank tellers count money faster than normal people? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 3, 2005, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-bank-tellers-count-money-faster-than-normal-people/329238 "2005-11-03T03:45:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2005, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-bank-tellers-count-money-faster-than-normal-people/329238/21 "2005-11-03T22:25:35Z")
> [@Bearflag70](#): > > I probably saw about one counterfeit bill everey few months or so. The most highly counterfeited denomination was $20, probably because a $20 is the largest denomination likley to “slip under the radar” without much scrutiny. Actually when the Loss Prevention guys gave us teller trainees their speech, they told us the $5 is the most counterfeited bill, and is usually passed at convenience stores rather than banks. Banks are a bad place to pass counterfeits because the tellers are so very accustomed to what real mony looks like and have lots of training and tools to detect fakes. Banks are more popular for laundering. I had one suspected counterfeit in a summer of fulltime work. It turned out to be real (just printed during the Depression, hence the strange color) but I got a kick out of calling the Secret Service. I worked for Chase Manhattan Bank in NYC. ---
**Author:** ![vetbridge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vetbridge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vetbridge)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2005, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-bank-tellers-count-money-faster-than-normal-people/329238/22 "2005-11-03T22:34:00Z")
> [@](#): > > **Do bank tellers count money faster than normal people?** As nobody has mentioned it yet, allow me to point out that by and large bank tellers _are_ normal people. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Bearflag70](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Bearflag70](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bearflag70)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2005, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-bank-tellers-count-money-faster-than-normal-people/329238/23 "2005-11-03T23:24:12Z")
> [@Hello Again](#): > > Banks are a bad place to pass counterfeits because the tellers are so very accustomed to what real mony looks like and have lots of training and tools to detect fakes. Many of the counterfeits were tucked in wads of cash being deposited at the bank by merchants. ---
**Author:** ![SusanStoHelit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@SusanStoHelit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SusanStoHelit)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2005, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-bank-tellers-count-money-faster-than-normal-people/329238/24 "2005-11-03T23:34:18Z")
> [@Slithy Tove](#): > > I was a bank teller. They taught us to hold your left hand out, palm toward yourself. Make a fork with your pointer and ring finger below the stack of bills, and your middle finger over the top, covering the left side of Washington’s face. Your left thumb slides the corner of each bill down as you count them, and your right thumb holds them back. That’s how I was taught to do it when I worked at a bank. The woman who taught me used to work in a casino, where they apparently also handle large amounts of cash. Who knew? ---
**Author:** ![drachillix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/48db29/32.png) [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2005, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-bank-tellers-count-money-faster-than-normal-people/329238/25 "2005-11-03T23:39:52Z")
> [@Hello Again](#): > > Actually when the Loss Prevention guys gave us teller trainees their speech, they told us the $5 is the most counterfeited bill, and is usually passed at convenience stores rather than banks. In my 10 years of amsement park I saw about 15, most of them in a few month period. They were actually turning up in our arcade token dispensers. Some enterprising individual made some that fooled the bill acceptors. The readers were replaced with newer acceptor units that were not vulnerable to that type of counterfeit. The ones in question were old optical ones that read a thin strip of the bill like a type of barcode. AFAIK nobody uses the optical ones much anymore due to this vulnerability ---
**Author:** ![Black\_Train\_Song](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4da419/32.png) [@Black\_Train\_Song](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Black_Train_Song)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2005, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-bank-tellers-count-money-faster-than-normal-people/329238/26 "2005-11-04T03:08:51Z")
checking back… My wife (the teller) says that they are trained to count 20s’ as 2,4,6,8,10,12,14 etc and then add a zero onto the end of that. 10s’ as 1,2,3,4…the same way. She added that she doesn’t count the way she was trained and that they always count at least twice. ---
**Author:** ![Lakai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de0a6/32.png) [@Lakai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lakai)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2005, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-bank-tellers-count-money-faster-than-normal-people/329238/27 "2005-11-04T04:54:45Z")
> [@Slithy Tove](#): > > I was a bank teller. They taught us to hold your left hand out, palm toward yourself. Make a fork with your pointer and ring finger below the stack of bills, and your middle finger over the top, covering the left side of Washington’s face. Your left thumb slides the corner of each bill down as you count them, and your right thumb holds them back. Maybe I’m misreading it, but this sounds awkward and slow. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-bank-tellers-count-money-faster-than-normal-people/329238.md?page=1)