I used to work in a convenience store/gas station that had very strict rules about how much money could be in the register at any one time ($50), and we did not accept large ($50 or $100) bills. The two exceptions were when the customer’s order itself was large (say $75 or so) or if they already had the gas in their tank (before we switched over to pre-pay all day). According to corporate the latter was because we allowed them to pump gas first it counted as a debt and if we refused payment we’d have to give them the gas for free.
There were signs on the pumps asking customers not to pay in large bills and warning them we might not have change for them. Some people ignored them and ended up either having to wait for enough other customers to pay in cash so they could get change or getting their change back in ways they’d prefer not to (ie lots of 1s or the odd roll of coins). I once had on particularly bitchy women pump about $12 worth of gas then wave a $100 around saying I had to accept it now. Which I did. Part of her change included a $50 box of rolled pennies.
I’m not understanding your objection here. Are you saying that one should never use emotive terms to describe something that happened? Or are you saying that you are convinced that the emotive terms used to describe the man’s actions were the wrong emotive terms to use for this situation?
eta: Never mind, I see that you are arguing with the journalist’s impartiality. I don’t think this necessarily follows either. The jounalist might have gotten information that convinced him or her that these words best described what happened. Also you’re saying that we are judging the man based on what is reported. Well, that’s always true. I won’t start every one of my sentences saying “If what I hear is correct, then I think…”
In this case, without being there, I don’t know if the man did enough to be charged with disorderly conduct, but it would be silly to argue that spilling a bunch of pennies on the floor and the counter should be something that a business cannot refuse to accept as a legal form of payment.
How am I doing that? Come on, I’m saying that it’s not common to get arrested for dickish behaviour - surely you’re not disagreeing with that?
That makes his actions sound much more reasonable, though of course the source is not unbiassed (and neither is the cop’s). Poured is different to dumped, I reckon, yeah. I guess it’s feasible that he might have happened to have that much money in pennies on him, taking them to a coinstar thing.
If the article originally posted had said poured and asked, I bet there would have been more sympathy for the arrested man. Even taking his version of events with a large pinch of salt, it doesn’t sound like he intentionally made the money roll onto the ground.
“Your Honor, I would like it to be entered into the official court record that the State of Utah considers this defendant to be a criminal dick in the second degree.”
Yes, I do disagree, depending on what you mean by “common.” It’s common in that it pretty much happens every day. At any given moment, someone somewhere in the United States is being arrested for what amounts to criminal dickishness.
Disorderly conduct is the most common criminal charge laid in any jurisdiction, and most disorderly conduct is some kind of dickishness. We used to refer to the charges of “being stupid during daylight hours” and “being stupid after sundown.”
You’re misreading your own cite. The two examples given are of services provided after payment. They can certainly turn him away at the time of service, but it’s too late for that in this case. He’s already accepted their services, and he owes them a debt. He’s trying to pay it with legal tender, and the law says that he can do so (absent some other agreement he’s made to the contrary).
I’ll note that the Treasury cite doesn’t actually say that explicitly. It doesn’t explicitly define debt in the way you do and doesn’t say that providing services prior to demanding payment obviates the right to refuse currency or coin as payment.
You must be joking. You think the guy just happened to be carrying a 14-pound sack of pennies that just happened to match the amount of money the clinic said he owed, and just happened to go to the clinic before he went to the CoinStar to trade in his 14 pounds of pennies, and the clinic was so mean to him that he spontaneously decided to pour the 14 convenient pounds of pennies in the convenient sack onto the countertop? You think it’s conceivable that he was just walking around town with $25 in pennies in a 14-pound bag but he didn’t deliberately take them to the place with the $25 copay he was disputing?
Come on.
Not a bit.
If you pour a large number of pennies out of a bag onto anything, some of them are going to fall on the ground. As the guy said, pennies roll. If you’re focusing on the fact that some of the pennies wound up on the floor, I think you missed the point.
What if the guy was being a real dick and only dumped 2499 pennies on the counter (or a penny or two rolled on the floor under a cabinet)? After the poor clerk counted them, would the guy demand that they be recounted?
The thing with paying in cash is that you need to have the business give you a receipt, otherwise you’ll never prove that you actually paid the debt. That’s why I would count one penny and offer a receipt. And then send him a bill for $24.99. Or better yet, let the guy walk out and send a bill for $25.00 plus late fees. The business can be a bigger dick by dinging his credit.
Even if they business did want to count it, did they have an obligation to do it right then? Why not say 'Sir, please take a seat and we’ll have someone count it when we get a chance" and suddenly have all the clerks busy until closing time doing an important task like taking a staple and paper clip inventory between real customers.
What if he had dumped 25 Presidential $1 coins on the counter? Surely that might get him a smug look, but not an arrest.
So where is the line? What legal tender can he pour/dump? 50 cent pieces? Quarters? Dimes? Nickles? Obviously not pennies.
And I thought that we had resolved this “legal tender” debate in other threads. Of course a business can specify that they only take folding green, or debit cards, or cattle. But when it comes to the repayment of an already assumed debt, ALL US currency in any form is a legal tender for that debt.
*Just to add: I’m not saying that the guy isn’t a work class dick. Making the front office staff that is getting paid…(hehe) pennies for their work clean up after him is not the people who he should be directing his anger at.
However, from a legal perspective, he tendered payment. Is it a rule that I must pay my debts with a smile on my face and with currency stacked in neat order?
There might not be such a rule in transactional law, but all other kinds of laws still apply, for example, in this case, the criminal penalties for disorderly conduct. The Uniform Commercial Code doesn’t specifically prohibit you from tendering Federal Reserve notes affixed to an arrow that you fire through the heart of an office clerk, but that doesn’t mean that the criminal law of homicide won’t get you in trouble.
Fair enough. But I reiterate my earlier point. He didn’t throw them AT the clerk. He didn’t commit an assault or battery. If he had angrily thrown a $50 bill on the desk and demanded, DEMANDED! his change back, then he would have been chalked up as simply as asshole customer; no harm, no foul.
But he paid in another form of legal tender, which due to its bulk, would cause more inconvenience for the clerks to pick up and count.
If you make the first good, but the second bad, then you are adding an extra penalty for paying angrily in pennies.
There was no fear of bodily injury or arrows through the heart. Just pissed off clerks with a vendetta who actually made this a police matter with police who were happy to comply.
That’s why he wasn’t charged with assault or battery.
Again, if for some reason the guy had just found himself with thousands of pennies that needed to be gone today, he could have put them in rolls. It’s the same amount of pennies, he makes essentially the same point, and he doesn’t inconvenience anyone or bring the business to a halt while some employees clean the floor and count the pennies. The guy chose to pay in 2,500 loose pennies to be a dick and he got called on it. The “it was legal tender” defense doesn’t fly.
I think they were pissed and on account of the smug twerp who dumped a 14-pound bag of pennies on the counter.
That’s why I said way back in post No. 17 that the legal tender question is a red herring inthis case. He was nit issued a citation offering the wrong kind of payment. In fact, I cant think of ant criminal charge possible under that rubric. If he offered the wrong kind of payment, then the applicable body of law is the civil law of commercial transactions and contracts. He was cited for disorderly conduct. The sole legal question is whether under the applicable state or local law what he did was fairly characterized as disorderly conduct. If he appears in court to face that charge, we’ll see what the judge says, but whatever it is will have nothing tondo with the concept of legal tender.
Right. It’s not disorderly conduct to slam a $50 on the counter and demand change/receipt. It IS disorderly to dump pennies on the counter and demand change/receipt.
What is the common factor that might make a difference between the two? The bulk of the legal tender?
I think Acsenray is right and it’d be foolish to continue along this tack. West was charged with disorderly conduct because he made a mess at the clinic that the employees had to waste a bunch of time cleaning up. He happened to accomplish that noble goal with 14 pounds in pennies. If he’d done made a comparably large and complex mess with food or garbage, he would face the same kind of charge.
I’m not sure how you define debt in a way that doesn’t include this man’s medical debt. If he were to not pay the $25 and then file for bankruptcy, the hospital would line up with his other creditors. How is this not a debt?
Personally, if somebody gave me 2,500 pennies unrolled as payment. I would have said “ok, have a seat while I count it”. Then, count every single penny. Put them in stacks of 10, and when you get to 50, you have to stop and roll them. Then, he must sign each roll to validate that the roll infact does have 50 pennies in it. When I was a cashier, we had to have a name/address on the roll of pennies, the banks insisted on it. (incase the roll just had 1 penny on one end, and 1 penny on the other end and filled with useless weighted matter).
I did get back at a dickish customer in the fabric store. She had ordered 18 yards of a fancy trim. When it arrived, she insisted I unroll it and make sure all 18 yards were there. I told her that I could do that, but it wouldn’t be rolled up as tightly and nicely as the manufacturer did it. She insisted againt that I count it AND roll it nicely. I did, being quite meticulous about it, and it took me forever. Of course, the customer had to wait for me to finish…
Of course, nowadays it would be difficult to find an appropriate object costing less than 48 cents. (Which of course wouldn’t stop jerks like in the OP.)
