You seem to be doing well. Much better my local people doing a similar job, at least. Keep on at it!
I do this, too, but I go to the Walmart (or Kroger or Target or whatever typical grocery store-ish place) self-checkout where I don’t have to deal with a cashier. If no self-checkout, then it makes more sense to do it with a cashier in one of those places, not a gas station or convenience store. I don’t smoke, so I never really go inside gas stations or convenience stores unless they are the only option in a “food desert” type place. OP has mentioned nearby Walmart and several other businesses, so I assume that’s not the case here.
When someone does that be sure to check to see if the bill is counterfeit. While there are legit transactions like that it’s also a common way to pass funny money in my area.
Uh-huh. And what is that person going to do if this wasn’t an accident and the person deliberately swiped a card that wasn’t going to go through and made sure to skedaddle before the “reject” message came up on the register?
Again, this can be a legit “I forgot” (and we’ve even had some very honest customers come in later to pay up when the realize what happened) but it’s also a tactic thieves use.
To follow up on this;
As long as it’s not a $1 or $2, the designs of which haven’t changed in decades and are quite low-tech compared to other denominations, the easiest way to check a bill is to hold it up to a light source. You should be able to see a transparent watermark on the right side of the bill - either a large 5 for a $5 bill, or a smaller bust of Hamilton/Jefferson/Grant/Franklin as appropriate, as well as a vertical strip with the denomination printed on it. The latest version of the $100 also has the hologram stripe along the front which is pretty easily distinguishable and difficult to fake.
If you happen to come across older (I.e. '90s or earlier) bills, the frame around the president’s face should have the words “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” in very tiny printing which you might need a magnifying glass to make out, and the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 should have the names of the states visible on it in similar tiny printing.
If the store doesn’t have counterfeit pens, you might want to buy your own at your local office supply store for a couple of bucks. These are iodine markers that react to the presence of starch - US currency is printed on cloth paper which contains no starch, so on a real bill the pen will leave a yellow mark, whereas with a bill printed on inferior paper the iodine will react to the starch and turn black. These pens won’t tip you off to “washed bills”, however, in which someone has taken a low denomination bill, bleached it, and printed a larger denomination onto it, so the light test is always a good second step to take if you’re not sure.
Texture can also be an important giveaway. You know on an intrinsic level what a dollar bill is supposed to feel like, because you’ve handled thousands of them over the course of a lifetime. If a bill doesn’t feel right between your fingers when you touch it, it’s probably not good.
It’s also become not uncommon lately for fraudsters to try to pass off theatrical prop money as the real thing, especially in large transactions - you might have a customer purchase a money order for a large amount and pay with a stack of hundreds, that has a few real bills on the top and bottom and a bunch of prop bills in the middle. We actually had someone try this at my work last year, and fortunately we didn’t fall for it. Prop bills are designed to look real from a distance but are immediately identifiable as fake if you look at them for more than a fraction of a second, as such;
So just make sure that when you’re handling large transactions you take enough time to get a good look at what you’re being paid with.
In the mid 80s, a friend owned a big pet store in eastern Pennsylvania. They’d just gotten a credit card scanner that didn’t charge the card directly, but approved/declined the requested transaction. If approved, the device gave an approval code, like e4w-34r.
My friend showed me a credit card slip one of his cashiers had in her drawer. A large transaction for a 55 gallon tank with filters, pumps, stand, “the works”. In the authorization code block the cashier had dutifully copied: DEC-INED (she’d read the L as the expected -).
In a busy, bar with dim lighting texture is the way to detect counterfeit twenties. I’ve seen twenties that were accepted, usually for a cheap bottle of beer during a rush. Looked like a twenty, felt like a piece of cardboard.
Yeah, someone apparently tried to pass some prop bills at my 7-Eleven before I was hired there. It was confiscated and taped behind the register as an example to the others.
Must have been kismet that I mentioned this. Tonight, when I got home, my landlady’s daughter mentioned on the family Discord chat that she has some gently-expired milk in her fridge that she doesn’t know where it came from. I’ve gotten permission from one of the managers at 7-Eleven to bring it in, set it in our cooler, and hand it out to Older Cat Lady when next I see her. It’s Walmart brand, so it won’t be confused with anything else.
FYI, cow’s milk is supposed to be bad for cats - gives them diarrhea.
Yeah, I once got a counterfeit $10 in a taxi in Toronto. I didn’t realize it until I went to use it for a snack at the subway station.
This was a couple of bank-note series ago. The note had the required shiny overprinting, but it didn’t feel quite right. It was definitely more than the average person with a colour laser printer could make though.
Now, of course, our bank notes are made of polymer.
Those movie prop banknotes are interesting. I wonder whether there are similar ones for countries using polymer banknotes?
A couple years ago, I almost didn’t buy a big bag of uncut sewing patterns (which I sell on Amazon) at an estate sale, but I sure was glad I did, because while inspecting said patterns, I found a total of $82 in cash, in crisp 1984 bills. Most of it was in tens, and when I presented them to a teenage cashier at the grocery store up the street, she looked at it and asked me, “Are these real?” I told her yes, and that they were older than she was, and she did take them.
Had I found the cash while I was there, I would have turned it over to the people running the sale, but I didn’t find it until after I got home, so it was mine, all mine.
I had a similar experience sort of in reverse.
Us older folks already know this part, but for any younger readers … The front side of all US currency of all denominations had looked essentially the same from the 1930s to about 1996 when the first $20s were created with the larger portrait off center. The US $1 still looks the old way today in 2022, but pre-1996 they all used to look like that: almost the same except for whose portrait it was and the numbers & words denoting the value.
A bit later the new $20s were still fairly novel and any random pile of $20s would probably be 2/3rd old & 1/3rd new style, at least in the big cities / suburbs where I lived.
In that transitional era I was on a long-distance trip when I stopped in a small town and tried to pay for some stuff in a local store with a new-style $20. The middle-aged cashier had never seen one & was real suspicious. This was pre-internet of course, so no “instant just look it up”. Fortunately, there was another clerk who’d heard of these newfangled bills and they took my money. But not until after an extended conversation. It was a bit vexing but kind of fun at the same time.
Apparently the local First (and only) Bank of Podunk had not received their first shipment of new-style bills and the almost closed economy in that town didn’t see much influx of outside cash.
Day 17. A 2-8 shift on a Monday.
A couple in an SUV broke down and made it into our parking lot. A problem with their starter. I called the Pilot station across the street for them to ask if they had a tool kit they could buy to aid in repairs. They did. Eventually, they were able to get underway after an hour or two. (The woman of the couple got a free coffee using my benefit, which I offered, as I had a few weeks ago with the lady who hit the deer.)
At one point, the women’s toilet stopped flushing, and it got backed up with toilet paper, but thankfully not anything more disgusting. I managed to get it to flush the paper, but it wouldn’t flush any more. Thankfully, my mentor was able to fix it.
No negative customer interactions today.
I talked a guy into getting a Cheeseburger Big Bite when I said I like it just as much, if not better, than regular cheeseburgers.
I forgot to bring the milk from home for the old cat lady, and she came in today. I admitted that I’d goofed and not brought it, but she appreciated me thinking of her.
Our friends/neighbors sell milk at their farm store. The dairy reimburses them for expired milk and they can keep it. The dairy also gives them expired/sour milk.
They give the milk to their 5 pigs. Pigs love it, even if it is chunky.
Day 18. A 3-9 shift on the day before Thanksgiving.
Place was pretty steady. The nice lady and her mom who made me feel very good about myself a couple weeks ago came in again, and they again spread their positive energy. They bought a whole crate of our 7-Eleven Pire Water. I helped carry it out to their car.
A woman with a lovely accent came in. She’s from Australia, visiting here for the holidays. She doesn’t really like turkey, green bean casserole, or cranberries, though.
Got a lot of people donating to the children’s hospital. Must be the holiday spirit.
PURE! Pure Water!
I was wondering if that was a new brand!
It’s on fire with customers.
I was wondering if it was pyre water.
You’ve heard of bourbon and branch water. Well your stuff is needed to make a gin & ghoul water. With just a twist of ectoplasm.