Anymore, whenever I get change, the cashier puts the bills in my hand first and then puts the change on top of them. This is a hassle- the coins tend to slip off of the bills. Cashiers used to put the coins in the customer’s hand first, which was much better. Why the change in making change? Any cashiers care to elaborate?
I think I know why. I was a cashier at a neighborhood convenience store in the early 70s and we used to count out change by first counting up from the sale price, up until the amount tendered. For example, if the sale was $8.72 and the customer gave a $10 bill, we would count 3 pennies up to 8.75, a quarter up to 9.00, then a dollar bill to make it 10. But now, nobody who works as a cashier can count, so they punch in the amount tendered into the computerized cash register, which tells them how much change to give. So in this example it tells them to give $1.28, so first they get the bill, then the quarter, then the three pennies, in reverse of the old way.
What I love is when they hand you bills, put the receipt on top, and then the coins on top of the receipt.
:rolleyes:
I think this is it. They used to count the coins out, affirming in your mind and theirs the accurate amount of change.
Now they don’t count them out, you need to see them yourself to make sure it’s the right amount. Notes on top of coins would obscure your opportunity to quickly count the coins, so they put them on top where you can witness their accuracy yourself.
Because they go by what the cash register tells them to give back for change. If the register says give back $10.72, they grab the ten first and then put the .72 on top of it.
Why do they do this? Because they’re too dumb to count up.
Warnings: cash registers are not infallible. In the past, I have received too much change from people who were going by the (wrong) amount displayed by the register. In such cases, I don’t bother to point it out, because anyone who is that willing to go by what a machine says is obviously going to argue the point with you.
Partly correct. The part you missed is the new generation of “supervisors” are poorly trained themselves, don’t trust their staff, and no one is paid anymore to think on their feet, nor dare make the attempt. When “management” holds contempt for everyone underneath them, their shit truly rolls downhill. But let’s not forget many customers themselves are dumb as rocks, rude and full of shit, too. Dung beetles all around.
What’s special about that?
Flat bill goes on flat hand, you cup your hand to receive the coins. If the coins come first, you’re liable to lose the load attempting to grasp the bill.
I remember a thread on this from awhile back and there was a suggestion that it was a cultural sensitivity-PC thing about not touching the hand directly and the way they always did it in some places. Can’t say I ever dug into the truth of that. And yeah, I find it annoying.
Spark240, if it’s a long receipt on top of bills and then coins on top of both, quarantee spill
I think that’s a large part of it, but there’s also a gender related reason. Somewhere (probably here) I read that women like the bills-first/coins-on-top method. If they’re paying with cash, they probably already have their purse or pocketbook on the counter, with the wallet open. They can just slide the coins into the waiting change compartment, then deal with the bills. It’s only a hassle if you want to put the coins in your pocket.
Being impoverished (it’s THE “in” thing these days!), I shop at Wal-Mart much more than I’d like.
Anyway, I do the debit card, cash back. Except the cashier didn’t give me the cash - just shut the cash drawer and had scanned an item for the next customer when I pointed out that she owed me $x.
Now comes the part I could not believe.
She leaves her station to get a “manager” who comes over, logs the cashier off her terminal, logs himself on, and opens the cash drawer for her.
I did ask: she IS NOT ALLOWED to open the cash drawer. Let that sink in. A cashier who is not allowed to open the cash drawer.
And she then explained “and I don’t WANT to be able to…”. This woman is 50+ years old.
The machine says $3.42 change. We read left-to-right. 1-2-3 dollars, a quarter, a dime, a nickle and2 pennies. In that order.
I will not be surprised when the terminals tell them which coins to give.
It drives me crazy. In Australia there are no notes below a $5. So If my bill comes to $15 and a few cents and all I have is $20s and change I offer some change. Invariably it is handed back with an explanation that, “It’s less than $20.” However if they are short of change they will ask, “Do you have the 5 cents,” but don’t seem to make the connection the other way.
I’ve always seen it as a matter of giving the important stuff first, with the coins as an afterthought.
Besides, who puts change in your hand? Everywhere I shop puts the money on the counter.
Now that I think of it, putting the bills on the counter first makes more sense - the coins are on top to keep the bills from blowing away.Plus, they’re smaller; if they were underneath the bills, the customer might not see them.
I think you mis-understood. What the manager meant is that she is not allowed to open the cash drawer outside of a sale. Excluding mom and pop places, that’s almost always the case.
Back to the OP. When a cashier hands me the bills first, I normally try to flip them up and out of the way in my hand so they have to put the coins on my palm. What bugs me is when they put the bills in my hand, but then hold them there until they can set the coins on top of them. Or worse, when it’s at a drive through and it’s hard to keep your hand level until it’s back in your car.
I have to say I don’t believe this. If the register displayed the incorrect amount to give back as change I have to assume the cashier entered the wrong amount in for how much you gave them. Did you check your receipt with a calculator?
Unless the registers were very very very old and the logic circuits were starting to die. That’s the only time I’ve seen an adding machine stop working reliably.
Are you familiar with how onerous WalMart’s cash control policies are? Their cashiers are held to extremely exacting standards in terms of coming up short – or long – when their drawers are counted out. Coming up short more than twice, last I heard, by any amount, is grounds for termination.
And unlike some establishments, WalMart cashiers don’t ever count their own drawers, not even a preliminary count. They hand their drawers into the cash office, which means that they have no recourse, they have to take the word of cash control as to the total that was actually in their drawer at the end of a shift.
So if they had the power to actually open their drawers themselves, any leeway they might get would undoubtedly disappear. It’d be automatically assumed that an incorrect count was a result of misfeasance rather than error, and any discrepancies would be grounds for immediate dismissal.
Can you imagine, given their reputation, how hard it is to explain being fired from WalMart? Especially when the reason is suspected theft or financial tomfoolery?
[I worked in the cash office of a large retailer for while. I could tell tales about over/under on cashier drawers, how drawers are accounted, and so on. But that’d be a hijack of the thread. I can say this: our policy was for change to be **counted** back, coins first, and it part of cashier training was to ensure that they could return change properly. Sadly, I recently discovered that this is no longer policy at that company.]
When I worked in a convenience store, I discovered that a friend of mine was embezzling money from the store. For many purchases, instead of ringing it up, he would simply hit the “no sale” button, which opened the cash drawer so he could put the money in. Customers almost never wanted a receipt. So any transactions he handled this way caused the drawer to come up over at the end of the shift, and he would skim the overage. This is why cashiers are not allowed to open the drawer unless they are ringing in a transaction.
In the U.S. the predominant custom is to offer change into someone’s hand. It can actually be very mildly offensive to put money on the counter, except in a bar.
So that’s why American cashiers always looked at me funny.