Your opinion has been noted. I really don’t think I am: I just think my failed attempt at humour in the original description has irredeemably coloured everyone’s opinion of my actual, real-life interactions with cashiers. But could I please request you pit me in another thread or discuss by p.m.?
My own fault for replying above, I know. I’ll stop posting in this thread, but I’ll keep reading in case anyone else wants to share their opinion of me here.
So, no-one in the US likes using coins over paper just because they’re coins? For the weight and sound of them? Me, I love using coins when I can - I carry a coin pouch sometimes for just that reason.
My experience is the opposite, both as someone who worked the resister and as a customer. It helps keep my register full of bills and coins of all denominations. For example — and this is the same type of example with bills instead of coins — I was at the bakery last week and my total came to something like $11.26. I handed her $15. Then I said wait, I think I have a dollar and a penny, and she said “oh, thank you, that helps.”
It’s been a long time since I’ve come across somebody confused by this type of transaction. Maybe new cashiers, but pretty much everyone uses registers that do the math for them (who is required to do it in their head?)
Those probably aren’t the exact numbers or the dollar doesn’t make sense.
Nah, but the ones who don’t like change cough are very vocal. I find it satisfying to visit a country where I can pay for something with a single coin
Oops. Morning brain. Should have been $10.76 and I gave her a buck and a penny.
OK, I’ll give this a try. I’ll be running some errands this morning, including Weis* and Wal-Mart. I’ll take along a film can full of quarters, plus whatever other random change I have lying around. Will report back later.
*Regional grocery chain. I’d never heard of them until they opened stores in my part of Maryland about ten years back.
Excuse me, I’m off to get a stack of $2 bills from the bank, before they get discontinued.
Actually, I am. I’ve got a poker game in an hour, and a teller who saves twos for me. (And puts up with me when I intone “It’s all about the Jeffersons, bay-bayyy…”)
.
Okay, I’ve got a batch of protest signs ready to go:
“A HAY-PENNY WILL DO!”
I’m reminded of the John Finnemore sketch where a clerk is upbraided for saying “Awesome!” to a customer doing the same:
"Really? The fact that I have a 20 pence piece inspires you with awe?"
“No, it just means I can make the change…”
“I see; and it is your newly-found change-making power that renders you awe-struck? Tell me, young lady, have you ever been to the Grand Canyon?”
“Nooo…”
“Probably for the best, I can only assume your head would explode.”
She does dole out more than 20p worth of comeuppance…
I don’t want to dump on the good doctor any more but I didn’t mind someone giving me the right amount of change to make the transition even. I was opposed to what I perceived as a smug math test.
Dammit! I want my Mill tokens!
Did a search for these. Found a company that’ll sell you mill ($.001) tokens from various states for $1.25 each. That’s some inflation there.
Finally, you can pay gas stations in exact change and not rely on them to round those 1/10s of a cent for you. I bet they’re always rounding up!
Where are you shopping that the clerk doesn’t punch $5.10 into the register and it spits out that the change is $0.25? I haven’t seen a clerk manually count out change in I don’t know how long.
What usually winds up happening is that the clerk punches in $5, gets the change indicated $1.52, then the customer says, wait, here’s a dime two nickels and three pennies to make it even, and the poor slob now has to add up $1.52 and $0.23 to get the clever $1.75 the customer wanted back.
God bless you.
Brilliant!
I love the look/feel of a classic Morgan dollar. I’d love to still use those like in a Western.
Money should make no sound other than a soft rustle.
Your money don’t jiggle jiggle, it folds?
Having had the cashier ask me for change when it would make his or her life easier, and instantly spot if I had accidentally left out a dime or whatever, I am not convinced that people who handle cash all day every day are that innumerate. This is the reason pre-decimal coinage was never a problem. Even though the general change-making problem is weakly NP-hard…
Got rid of practically all my non-quarter change, and about $13 worth of quarters, all of which went to reducing my bill at each store. Next several times I go to a grocery store or Wally World, I’ll take along 3 film cans of quarters, and pay $20 of my bill with them each time. No CoinStar fees, no hassle.
(OK, it takes a few minutes to feed all those quarters into the slot - at WalMart, I had to wait a minute at one point for the machine to process the quarters I’d already fed in before it would take any more. But no big deal really.)
Part of it is that, for a lot of Americans, there is a certain level of tradition and patriotism bound up in the dollar bill, as a perceived symbol of America.
And, part of it seems to also be the perception that “coins aren’t real money” – probably because the biggest coin that sees any real circulation is only a quarter-dollar, and unlike in the past, you can’t buy much with a single coin (or even a small handful of coins). Or, to quote someone else in this thread: