What is your work, exactly?
I don’t agree with this, either. There are plenty of businesses around here who take twenties but simply don’t take fifty or hundred dollar bills due to counterfeiting. A twenty is not a fifty or a hundred; imagining different scenarios for each is not straining my logic muscle.
Finance.
Oh? I thought it was irony.
I guess that explains the problem.
Just to add some more fuel to the fire…
It is also possible that the guy (or his superiour) realise that he is not starting off with enough change, they just simply doesn’t care. And for his business it probably isn’t an issue for him.
In businesses where you are selling impluse items, you have to provide change because there is a danger that if you put a barrier between them and the sale they may decide that they don’t want the item after all. Similarly if you are selling items that can be bought just about anywhere, you have to provide change because there is a danger that someone will just go to the shop next-door or whatever that will give them change. However if you are selling items that people need and that they can’t easily get you don’t have to be as accommodating to everyone’s demands because there is a fair chance that they will do what they require to get the item.
The ultimate example of this principle is buses. In most places to buy a bus ticket on the bus you have to have either correct change, or close to it. Bus drivers rarely have enough change to routinely change $20 notes. The reason they have little change is not because they are stupid. It is because they know that if they refuse to sell people with $20 notes tickets, then the vast majority of them will simply go and get change, and then get on the next bus. By refusing to give change they don’t actually lose any business. In fact refusing to give change is actually a smart thing for them to do, because they don’t loose much business doing it, that they don’t need a large float, it simplifies their accounting, and it gets people onto the bus quicker, potentially convining more people to take the bus.
I would guess that since this guy is in a truck driving around he is probably selling things that can’t easily be bought elsewhere. And many of the things that post-offices sell are things that people buy because they need them. Therefore I think that your logic that “a refusal to change is a lost sale” is most probably false. I would imagine that the majority of people he refused to change for would simply just go and get change, and then go back and buy what they originally wanted. Let me ask you this, when the guy refused to change your $20 note what did you do? Did you just not buy the stuff you wanted, do you go to a non USPS place to get it, or did you just get the change and go back?
The whole “he has to do what I want because I am his customer” logic that you seem to be using is demonstrably false. Just because you propose a profitable trade under certain terms does not mean that he has to accept it. There are many situations in which it is in someone’s best interests to refuse profitable trades because the acceptance of one trade limits their abilty to make others. To be a successful business person you have to be able to see not just the person standing in front of you but the wider picture as well. It seems that you have trouble grasping this.
What I find really worrying in all of this is your insistence that if anyone refuses to change a $20 note (but, oddly enough not a $50 or a $100) is irrefutable evidence of their diminished mental capacity. Who knows, maybe he is stupid. However your rant is far from proving it, and in fact your lack of ability to see that the situation is far more complicated then you originally realised is evidence of your simple-mindedness, not his.
Joey Jo Jo.
Yeah, I fear for your sanity, too, as I mentioned previously. Speaking of which, I’m afraid I can’t take anonymous testimony as evidence. I don’t think you’re lying, you understand, but you kind of have a history of coming across as delusional. I am glad though that you have these friends and co-workers to help reassure you, no matter what their ontological status may be.
I ended up sending the package by DHL the next day.
sigh
You can continue to make pot-shots at my mental makeup and intelligence or lack thereof :rolleyes: but the fact remains you still haven’t explained why the guy was being anything but stupid for completely irrational reasons.
I made the case that trying to pay with a $20 bill and being turned down because the person is afraid he might run out of change later was stupid. I have offered evidence of others in similiar retail situations who have not needed to hoard change.
You all then came back with all sorts of quite frankly unlikely scenarios where it would be considered logical to not take a sale when someone pays with a $20 bill. I think regardless of circumstances a retailer has to focus on the customer in front of him, but I still shot down every one of your scenarios:
‘Maybe he’s worried about having too much cash on hand’
Can’t be any more worried than taxi drivers or coffee/bagel stand vendors who are far more exposed and seem to always have ample cash on hand.
‘Maybe he can’t leave his truck’
Nope. Locks up and leaves his truck for lunch.
‘He has to think about his profits’
Nope. He’s working for the United States Fucking Postal Service, which isn’t supposed to make a profit. The guy doesn’t need to be a ‘successful business person’.
‘Maybe his superiors don’t give him enough change to start the day’
a) I find it hard to believe that a Kenyan who’s been here only eight months has a better grasp of how much cash he needs on hand compared to a guy who’s been at the same job for at least three years (in fairness, I believe the Kenyan doesn’t own the stand; I believe the stands are just leased out. So maybe someone else controls his starting cash). And b), the fact remains that *he wasn’t fucking out of change. * As far as we can tell, since I was one of his first (if not the first) customer of the day, that unless he was starting out with zero change, he wasn’t even close to running low on change. So, not only was his attitude wrong “I’ll turn this guy down now, so I don’t run the risk of maybe having to turn down one or more guys later” - it was misguided to boot, because he is probably never going to actually run out of change!
This isn’t a ‘complicated situation’. These kinds of transactions occure millions of times a day. If this was so fucking normal, I would ask you guys - how often have you been turned away because the guy was afraid of running out of change? Not very often, I’d guess - which suggests that running out of change is pretty rare, and that the fear of running low on change is also relatively rare. As a retailer, how often have you actually run out of change and had to simply shut down for the day? When you did get low on change, what did you do? Turn people away, or ask if they had small bills or could make change for the large bills you had? Do you often find yourself at the end of the day with nothing but $20s in your drawer, or do you have more small bills than your initial bank?
I would say that the vast majority of people, the vast majority of the time, have a mix of small bills in their wallets - in other words, the guy had ample time to ask future customers to pay in small bills if they can, or if they can break a $20. I would also say that retailers pretty much close to always end up with far more in small bills than they started out with. Unless you can prove to me that these two points are false the majority of the time, I think it’s safe to say that we can assume one of four things:
-
I’m a complete jerk for expecting anyone to make change for a $20 regardless of whether or not he actually has enough change now. Because he might run out later! If this is the case, he should probably just turn away anybody who tries to pay with a $20. Because, you know, he might not be able to take business from other future potential customers.
-
The USPS, a federal agency, is completely out of touch with reality, and is forcing their mobile P.O. workers to start out with almost zero change. Cab drivers and guys running the bagel kiosks, however, have a much better grasp of their daily cash flow needs.
-
The guy’s irrational fear of running out of change was purely psychological in nature; turning down a sale was either due to sheer stupidity, or an unwillingness to make the marginal, marginal additional effort to make change later on the minute chance he actually did run low. Either way, he’s a SFM.
-
The guy was a SFM, and I’m still a jerk.
I’m betting on 3), although I’d settle for 4) as well 
Yes we have, you just aren’t listening
So what? They were not examples from a USPS truck. We too have given you examples of places where what this guy did is standard operating procedure. Ever tried paying for a bus ticket on a bus with a $20 note? Besides, your position is that the ONLY explaination for this guys actions is that he is a SFM, therefore you have to show that there is no other possible explaination. Your little “situations” don’t cut it.
First off your assertion that “I think regardless of circumstances a retailer has to focus on the customer in front of him” is just flat out wrong. If you a retailer you are supposed to do whatever will generate the most sales/profit for you. Spending 2 hours with the indecicive guy “in front of him” deciding to buy a $1 item, while there are 5 other people in the store wanting service to buy $100 items is financial suicide. Same thing here. Giving away large chunks of change to small sales, crippling your ability to make further sales is idiotic, regardless of whether the person wanting you to give him large amounts of change is “in front of him” or not.
The other point is that to show that your assertion that the ONLY reason for this guy acting as he did is that he is a SFM is false, all we have to do is come up with a situation where that is not the case. We have done that. I don’t think you have shot down anything.
But you have to look at it from a cost/benefit point of view. If a large percentage of his business would just get the change and return, then he doesn’t NEED to have large amounts of cash on hand. He would still make roughly the same number of sales anyway. All it would do is increase his robbery chance. With the other people you mention a lot of their business may not just come back, so they need the cash.
The other issue is that some of these people may not have the cash on hand that you thiink. For instance it wouldn’t surprise of if taxi-drivers simply rounded things up and called the rest a tip.
Does he take the cash with him? I seriously doubt that. If you are a vendor / shop owner whatever the cash in the till is essentially yours. So you can just walk out with it and no-one cares. If you are a federal employee then the cash in the till belongs to the government, and I am almost certain that you couldn’t just walk off somewhere with it. In that case just walking off with the cash is called “stealing”.
Whatever, it is his job to make sales. Giving out all his change and crippling his ability to make sales is not doing his job very well. Besides if he did give you all his change as you wanted, you would probably be back in here calling him a SFM again for not being able to manage his change :rolleyes:
Several points:
- Maybe in the scheme of things his truck is in and odd situation, and the rules that work well for the vast majority don’t work for him
- Maybe they know he starts low on change but don’t care. He is a post office, not a change counter.
- REFUSING TO CHANGE A NOTE IS NOT A 1:1 PROPOSITION. Sorry for yelling, but you just don’t seem to be getting it. Given a chunk of change you can make one large amount of change for someone, or you cna make small amounts of change for many. Making change for you may stop him from making change for many other people, and as such he should be aiming to serve as many people as he can.
- Unless you have worked in one of these trucks I don’t think you really have the knowledge to condeming people based on your guesses about how much change they have and how much they need.
- In many ways the start of the day is your most precarious change time. It is when you have the least amount of money in your drawer, and also probably the time when you have more customers fresh from ATMs. The end of the day can often be a lot easier as you can generate change from sales, and you have a lot more overall money.
Depends on the situation. In small mobile shops (like this guys truck) I think it wouldn’t be all that odd to get turned down. Also you said that this happened towards the start of the day, so who cares how he would end up. Maybe he wasn’t turning down people with $20s at the end of the day. We don’t know.
There are any number of other possible explainations. Maybe the guy who was supposed to arrange his float was sick for the day, so he had to go out without it, and they were going to send someone later with his change. Maybe he DID have the change, but just didn’t like your attitude and decided to irritate you by not changing your $20. Who knows. I think now it is not so much about this guy being a SFM, it is about the fact that you can’t admit that he may not be a SFM.
Joey Jo Jo.
Thanks, I will.
I have, in fact. You just blustered and called me stupid. I called you stupid right back, only using bigger words. But this isn’t really about who is stupid, but whether there are legitimate alternative strategies to dealing with the dissemination of change according to circumstances. In your worldview, as represented in this thread, people either agree with you or they are stupid, and this is not consistent with your self-evaluation as a rational person.
And you were offered the experiences of others who did have to ‘hoard’ change. You’re chiding others for not knuckling under from the very kind of evidence that you yourself dismissed out of hand? That doesn’t sound very rational.
They weren’t unlikely, you merely said they were on the strange grounds that the other customers were hypothetical. But they’re not. They’re really coming, and there really is an advantage to pissing off one customer in order to avoid pissing off more than one in the future.
My father drove a hack. He got mugged all the time. A couple of times he came home with stab wounds. Small price to pay for always having change on hand.
But it has been suggested that there might be rules for how the cash is handled which come down from high up on the food chain. I too can bear witness to such snafus. You, I suppose, are fortunate enough not to have experienced them.
I consider this even more reason it is rational not to make change – the institution in question doesn’t need your money, and if the guy in the truck can save pissing off two other customers at the cost pissing you off, it’s worth it. The fact is, the post office effectively prints money in the form of collector’s stamps.
Again, you are using the same kind of evidence by cases that you ignored from other people. That guy had a sufficient change fund. That doesn’t prove everybody does. The institution may be stupid for not allowing enough of a starting drawer, but that doesn’t mean the clerk is stupid for making the best of the situation. In such a situation, turning down customers who would be a burdensome drain on the change fund is a rational strategy.
Rare is highly relative. If you spent your day at the office looking out for alligators, that would be quite unreasonable. If you were in the swamps of Louisiana, it would be very reasonable.
Because they got somebody to break $20s for them. That’s a lot of people with a lot of $20s. Sooner or later they’ll hit a cashier who has to conserve change at least until some of those small bills roll in.
Sadly, you can’t borrow change from the future.
It is sufficient to show that they’re irrelevant. Quo erat demonstrandum. And the ‘majority’ qualification is defeated by your own insistance that running into this problem is rare. Not so rare for the person who is stuck with a lousy startup drawer, sadly.
I think there’s another possibility:
- You thought the guy was stupid. He wasn’t necessarily. You think everybody who stuck up for him is stupid. They probably aren’t.
If he had said, “sorry, I’m low on change early in the day, can you come back later”? he’s not a SFM. Still stupid to be hoarding change, but at least in a slightly more understandable way.
If he had said, “sorry, I’m out of change”, he’s not a SFM. Shit happens. Not very often, but it happens. Hell, I’d go make change for him.
He asked me if I had a $10. Ergo, I infer he had plenty of singles. I asked if he was out of $10s, he said no, but he didn’t want to run out. This simply doesn’t jive with the ‘wanting to make change for many people at the expense of one’. What was he saving the $10s for, the one guy a week who tries to pay with a $50?
I should also note that I didn’t ‘go postal’ (sorry) on him. Hell, I didn’t even raise my voice. Once I ascertained that he wasn’t actually out of change, or even low on change, I asked if he realized he was turning someone down now, instead of maybe having to turn someone down later. He didn’t get it any more than you guys, just kept saying, “sorry, I might not be able to make change later”. Once I realized I was talking with an idiot, I gave up - even if you win an argument with an idiot, all you’ve done is…win an argument with an idiot. Kinda like talking to you guys, I realize.
Since you guys seem to be so big on hypothetical situations, let me ask you this. Instead of a $20, suppose you try to buy something with a $10, expecting $3 and change back. The retailer has more than $3 in change in her till, but says she doesn’t want to run the risk of maybe running out later, so refuses you the sale.
Are you saying you’d be completely ok with this? You would find this reasonable?
Suppose you paid with a five, and only needed $1 and change back, and she refused to make change.
It seems to me you’re saying that we should simply never expect a retailer to ever make change. If that’s your stance, let me know and we can argue that point instead of going around in circles on this, because none of your arguments are making any sense to me.
So, I know you hate anonymous testimony, but you’re about to get some more 
I asked my mom about this. She runs a small convenience store back home. She said it’s actually part of their training program. If you have change in your drawer, give it out, that’s what it’s there for. She said they approached it like:
You think you might be low on change, so you turn away a customer.
Odds you will -actually- run out of change: Low
Odds the next customer(s) will have small bills and/or can break a large bill: High
Odds you just pissed off a customer: 100%
Pissing off a customer on a possibility simply didn’t make sense as a customer service stance.
FWIW.
I notice people haven’t discussed my earlier comment on stewardesses hoarding brands of soft drinks ‘because they might run out’ (so people at the front of the section are denied their choice so people at the end of the section can have their choice - I’m a bit surprised some do this, since this customer service issue is also dealt with at inflight training programs).
This is a similiar situation - irrational hoarding due to the fear of maybe running out later - that has nothing to do with profits, maximizing sales, or whatever. If I was refused an apple juice on the plane even though there was apple juice in the cart, would I still be wrong to think that hoarding it was stupid?
Stewardess: Can I get you anything to drink?
Me: Sure, a Coke.
Stewardess: Here you go! (gives me a Coke)
Me: Thanks! (Vomits up a bit of orange juice into her waiting cup, so that she’ll have plenty of OJ to give to her next customer).
I am so glad that’s not how airline beverage service works. Otherwise, it’d be a good analogy.
Daniel
Sorry, that just doesn’t make any sense.
The proper analogy would be:
Stewardess: Can I get you anything to drink?
Me: Sure, a Coke.
Stewardess: Sorry, I’m low on Coke.
Me: But you’re not out?
Stewardess: No, but I might run out.
And while this hasn’t happened to me (I only drink water on planes), I’ve seen it. My question to you is, is this rationing at the expense of one customer in favor of a future customer reasonable to you?
If so many people are sure that I’m in the wrong here, I want to understand why. Because none of your arguments so far make any sense to me. I’m trying to figure out a point that we’re both in agreement on, so we can work from there.
Your analogy doesn’t include the stewardess getting change from some customers, and over time tending to end up with more beverage than she began with. Mine does. Since mine does, it’s closer to reality–but even mine doesn’t fit exactly, inasmuch as Coke and OJ are not fungible.
Daniel
ARGG! Forget trying to equate beverages with change. I’m trying to nail you down on a position so we can work from there.
In my stewardess analogy, is not allowing one customer their choice so someone later can have their choice reasonable, yes or no?
In the stewardess analogy, because she will never gain more beverages, her decision is not reasonable. It’s a sucky analogy because of the bolded phrase.
We could try something different:
Stewardess: What would you like to drink, hon?
You: A Big Gulpee of Coke! I want 128 ounces, straight down the gullet!
Stewardess: I’m sorry, all I’ve got is 144 ounces, and if I give 128 to you, I’ll not be able to serve very many other customers.
You: Stupid Fucking Retard!
How’s that? (Yeah, it sucks. The situations are not close enough to permit a good analogy between them, which is why I and others ignored your first attempt to do so).
Daniel
Oh my. Lord knows I cannot live knowing I have the disapproval of a shrewish drama queen and his/her clique.
Why does it not make sense if she will never gain more beverages? Wouldn’t it make even more sense to hoard it if she has only a finite amount, with no chance of getting more?
Your analogy might make sense if I could equate asking for change from a $20 on a $7-and-change transaction to asking for 128 ounces of coke when all she has is 144 ounces. Based on that analogy, we’d have to assume a) that the USPS guy started out with only $15 total in change on hand, my $13 in change would almost completely wipe him out, **and ** b) he wouldn’t be able to generate/make change from future customers.
To make your analogy fit what I think actually was the case, say that I asked for a normal, everyday portion of Coke, and still got turned down.
My whole point has been that this typical transaction is not cause anyone to fear running low on change, given what we can assume to be a normal starting bank and the likelihood of future customers having small bills, and that the USPS guy was stupid to think so. I’m still wainting for someone to show me that a) my transaction amount was unrealistically large, and/or b) starting banks are generally less than $20, and/or c) most people only carry around $20s (in which case b) is pretty stupid).
I have to say, you Dopers are some of the stupidest smart people I’ve come across.