Australians are somewhat notorious for complaining about how expensive everything is. But one thing you don’t hear is, complaining about losing money due to rounding off. All prices are rounded to the nearest 5c, have been for 20 years, and I don’t think I’ve heard a complaint about it since about 3 weeks after it started.
I only wish they had more gas stations here that have guys come out and fill up your car. What an ordeal in the winter! Park at a pump. Make your way inside, stand in line, fork over cash (trying to remember the number of the pump), make your way back out. Unscrew gas cap, insert pump, squeeze handle (which keeps sputtering off and on! off and on! ten cents worth of gas - stop! Squeeze! ten cents more of gas - stop! Squeeze! Repeat.) All this in howling freezing wind and snow, hands dead numb. Drive off. Turn around and go back for gas cap. Blah! I want a uniformed attendant waiting on me, I would pay an extra buck in the winter!
It’s called ‘Pay at the Pump’. You swipe your credit or debit card at the pump then start pumping. Where do you live, Bedrock?
In defence of the cashiers there might be another reason for their reaction. If their till’s out at the end of the shift they’ll have some explaining to do to the manager. And god help them if they’re seen taking money out of the till and pocketing it. (How else would they keep the change?).
I asked first.
I hadn’t thought of it that way - do they get in trouble even if the total at the end of the day is *above *what it should be ?
Yes. Short-changing customers is bad for business.
Depending on the place, but yes, some do. The management believes you haven’t been giving customers correct change if your register is over, which can result in complaints.
I worked fast food two summers during high school in the late '70’s. The first summer I was allowed to count out change. The second summer we were required to enter the amount tendered into the register and let it calculate the change due. Too many people couldn’t count out change correctly.
Spirit Airlines. blech…
I agree with most of your post, however I’ll nitpick here. Qantas don’t charge for entertainment - they hand out headsets for free. They also serve a snack and tea/coffee on the Canberra to Sydney route even though the aircraft is only in the air for about 20 minutes. After 4 pm on a weekday the booze is also free. Oh, and no charge for checked luggage.
Spirit isn’t an airline; it’s a bus company with delusions of grandeur.
I think there can be a fine line between parsimony and efficiency. Does it really make sense to pay someone to stand around at a gas station all the time, push some buttons, and move a pump handle around? The action is simple and easily learned, and the driver has to sit there until the tank is full anyway. Yes, there is an unemployment problem, but paying people to do make-work probably isn’t a good solution.
Does it really make sense to carry a bunch of food up in an airplane and charge everyone for it, even though the food is of relatively low quality and most people wouldn’t choose to pay an extra $10 for each ticket to get a meal “for free”? It seems to me that charging for additional service really does make us all better off. I can fly a bit cheaper, and the people who really do want to pay a premium for a re-warmed omelette still have that chance.
Even the thing about pay toilets on airplanes doesn’t seem completely beyond the pale to me. Pay public toilets are much more common on Europe than in the US, and, though it took me a little while to get used to it, I think it’s a much better system. Paying means that there’s money for someone to keep the facilities clean, stocked, and safe from vandalism, and the profit motive ensures that it’s never hard to find a toilet. I’d much rather pay a little bit for a nice and easy to find toilet than deal with some of the public toilets I’ve encountered in the states. Incentives matter.
I think the issue about rounding prices and getting rid of the penny is a different topic entirely. The people opposed to rounding prices seem to be incapable of critical thinking (realizing that rounding goes both ways) and pretty ignorant of economics as well.
Blank Slate:
ALWAYS cheaper.
Does New Jersey charge less of a gas tax to allow for stations to be competitive while employing extra people?
I think they just chose to make their money from drivers by tolling the heck out of their roads rather than through gas taxes.
I’ve sometimes wondered the same thing as the OP, particularly in relation to the “Sales tax not included in the price” thing common to many parts of the US I’ve visited.
I know I (and others) have asked about it on the boards before and usually get responses about local taxes (bullshit, computers are more than capable of calculating the price at store level) followed by “So you can see how much tax the Government is getting!”
To which I say “You get the same thing in a “total price” situation with the “This sale includes tax of $X” at the bottom of the receipt.”
It’s certainly been my international experience that most people I’ve talked to outside the US are only interested in knowing the total amount of money they have to pay for an item at point of sale, they particularly don’t care how what amount of that is going to the Government (with exceptions, of course - but not for most every day stuff.) The point is, I think people would prefer not to have to do slightly complicated maths* without a calculator just to work out what 7.15% on $16.08 is (for example).
As someone else mentioned, they got rid of 1 & 2c pieces in Australia and NZ years ago and people got over it very quickly. A few years ago NZ even ditched their 5c pieces and there was marginally more brouhaha over that, but as my friends and family in NZ pointed out, “It’s not like 5c buys anything anyway.”
And with rounding it evens out pretty quickly as well, and regardless, it’s still only a few cents which really aren’t worth getting worked up over IMHO.
*For the average person, I know you’re all mathematical geniuses here.
People are not receptive to change. U.S. citizens have grown up knowing that the price does not include sales tax, and despite there being a better way to do things, will fight the change. But resistance to change is not exclusive to U.S. citizens. Outsiders look at our oddities like not getting rid of pennies or not adding sales tax to the price of items before checkout, and shake their heads, but every place has quirks and idiosyncrasies that the locals will be loath to change.
The real problem arises in not respecting that different people do things different ways. Sure, when visiting a foreign land, you can learn some of the major customs (like tipping in the US versus Australia), but there is no way one can learn all the little differences (like here in NY we drink ‘soda’, but other places drink ‘pop’, ‘sodapop’, or my Georgia favorite, ‘coke’ (used to mean any soda)). Just accept that we’re not homogeneous instead of thinking ‘you’re doing it wrong’.
Is this really how you think people shop in the US? I’m pretty sure most people just add “a bit more” in their heads (if they think about it at all) and pay whatever number shows up at the cash register.
Yup. I don’t even remember how much the state, county, and city sales taxes in my area run. Yes, I pay a different sales tax in my little suburb of Chicago than I would just a few miles away if I cross a city boundary. I know I’ll pay more if I cross the county line, but don’t know what any given city’s sales tax is.
Well, those organizations that don’t pay sales tax would probably like to know how much they will have to pay, too. Either way someone is inconvenienced.