Trivia: S&H Green Stamps used to have “cash value xx mills” printed on them. The xx was a number, of course.
Pedantic nitpicking trivia: The U.S. has never minted a coin labeled “penny”. Calling a cent a penny is a holdover from British colonial times.
I was a teenager. I might not even do that now.
A decade later, one of my roommates got a $100 tip at the restaurant where we both worked, and she was going to paste it in her journal. I suggested that she Xerox it instead, and she ended up doing that and spending it, as was intended.
I will buy Susan B. Anthony or Sacajawea dollars out of cash drawers if I see them.
I want to see you do it with one of my 20-something coworkers as cashier so I can explain all over again that all of that is really truly actual money.
My employer is happy to take all legal tender but is moving towards not stocking twenties and using tens instead.
Suppose it depends on how the business owners want to lean.
When I was working in a magic shop at Tragic Mountain, a kid from… Portugal? came in and wanted to pay for something with a 1950s ten dollar bill (which is why I mentioned it earlier). My coworkers, all around the same age as I was (17) didn’t know what to make of it. I traded a $10 bill I had for the old one. I still have it around here somewhere.
Now that’s unexpected.
I know you work for a fairly large and professional company. Have they offered any rationale for this change?
I don’t mean to suggest your info is incorrect; I’m just wondering what was on Big-M Management’s mind when they came up with this idea?
That coin is very valuable, depending on condition, of course. Even lower grades sell for tens of thousands of $,
Permit me to make a minor correction. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing sells uncut sheets of many denominations, but they are not perforated. Woz bought uncut sheets and perforated and padded them himself.
Several years ago, I bought a bag of uncut sewing patterns at an estate sale, and when I took them home and inspected them, I found a total of about $80 in 1984 currency in those envelopes. Had I found them at the sale, I would have given it to the people running it, but since I found it at home, it was mine, mine mine LOL! Anyway, I handed one of those crisp 40-year-old bills to a teenage cashier at the grocery store, and she looked at it and asked me, “Is this real?”
It was.
BTW, when I worked at Target, they didn’t stock dimes in the cash drawers, although we certainly took them.
Some strip clubs would make change for food and drinks with $2 bills. It was supposed to double the value of the tips for the dancers.
Nope, no explanation offered.
Practice up until some time this summer (the change took place while I was on a multi-month medical leave so I don’t know exactly when) was to start the day both at the store registers and the gas station with 2 twenties in each drawer. The gas station no longer starts with twenties. The registers for the human-run lanes still start with 2 twenties but the cash drawers for the self-checkouts no longer have twenties. On the other hand the gas station now starts the day with $40 in quarters. Meanwhile, the coinage has been reduced in all other tills.
The upshot is that the tills are starting the day with less money overall along with a different mix of cash.
Our registers generate a lot of data that gets number crunched by Corporate Headquarters. Presumably someone analyzed all that to come up with the new base amounts for all the tills. I don’t know how well it’s going for the gas station, and it’s not a problem for the self-checkout areas, but the regular lanes are having issues with running out of ALL denominations of paper bills due to the number of people asking for cash back with their purchases, particularly early in the morning. Also more people are using 100’s and 50’s that we need to make change for. There is a way for us to replenish the tills if needed but it’s awkward and annoying.
Oh, and they have us start the day with 80 singles. WTH? That’s twice as many as we used to start with.
As someone who spends part of my week as a cashier, in the “front lines” so to speak, I’d rather they chuck another two 20’s in the tills to start the day, And reduce the amount of singles. But that’s me. I only run a register 30-40 hours a week, what the hell could I possibly know about this topic?
Colonies, and banks in colonies, issued their own currencies. The US mint was established in 1792, but couldn’t fill the need for cash immediately, so
state-issued and bank-issued bills continued to be printed.
In fact, the mint did strike some gold $5 & $10 denominations coins, mostly is made the -$1 coins. The first coin was the half dime, and then cents & half cents.
The US mint did not print paper dollars until 1861, when it needed the metal for the war. The first bills were called “demand notes,” because supposedly you could walk into the mint with one any time, and demand and receive the amount in silver printed on the bill.
No: half dimes were minted from 1792 to 1873. I have a collection of them in an album that is nearly complete. Tons of variety on the mint mark, position of date, flourishes.
The Civil War, and a need for silver was what caused the half dime to become the “nickel.”
There was a tiny silver coin worth 3 cents that was unpopular because of its size. But it was discontinued because of the war as well. At first it was replaced by fractional currency (bills worth less than $1), but that was even less popular, and thence the 3-cent nickel.
The reason for a 3-cent coin was that a postage stamp cost 3 cents.
When postage rose, 3-cent coins were discontinued altogether.
Probably the reason you don’t get $1 or 50 cent coins in change either. In spite of the USPS’s aggressive campaign to circulate $1 coins.
I’ve told this story before. It’s kinda the reverse of yours.
Back in the late 1990s I took a cruise ship to Alaska. This was just as the style of US currency was changing from the small portrait centered on the bill to the larger portrait offset to the left. Which was first introduced on the $20. At that time as an ordinary big city consumer you’d see mostly old $20s, but everyone I knew had handled some of the new ones and the novelty had worn off.
The stops on Alaskan cruise ships’ itineraries are mostly small towns that built a pier, a block or two of tourist shops and restaurants, figured out some local wilderness tour activities, then hired an acre of mobile homes hidden behind a hill and filled them with college kids to staff all the attractions for the summer.
Wife and I are in a tourist shop and go to buy something with a new $20. The college kid, who’d been trapped in that teeny town for 4 months by then, had never seen one and didn’t like the looks of it. She asked the boss, a grizzled 50-something local. He didn’t like the looks of it either. If you picture ol’ Jack Elam in a raggedy hat with his head cocked over trying to understand this mysterious apparition with his one good eye, you’ve got the idea exactly. “Ain’t never seen one of these things in these parts 'afore”.
We enlisted some fellow passengers who all produced the newfangled bills from their wallets and explained that yes, this is what new US money looked like. The manager & kid eventually believed the chorus and we got our trinket.
Sorry to bring up a sore subject. 
Yeah, that whole thing sounds mysterious and ill-considered.
Clearly management legitimately wants to minimize the cash in each till. And simplification should lead to reduced errors once the cashiers are used to e.g. always handing out 10s, not 20s.
But given the inexorable effects of inflation, bigger bills being proffered leading to bigger dollops of change given seems inevitable. Something doesn’t add up ( ) about this decision. Most likely that there’s nothing in the register data system to record when you have to close the register for a couple minutes to replenish the cash supply. So the cost of lost productivity there is invisible.
One of the hard truths about middle- and upper- management is that you’re trying to steer this beast of a business using only statistics, not direct first hand knowledge. So all decisions are subject to GIGO errors. And to the error that whatever’s not measured is completely invisible. Add crappy dirty data gathering and sloppy statistical methods to the mix and it’s a wonder any big business survives the drunken driving that inevitably results.
Naw, it’s OK. Not even the worst dumbassery inflicted on us - our registers have a design flaw that can result in grocery items being shoved off the belt and onto the floor. I’ve developed a truly awesome skill catching things I sense starting to fall out of the corner of my right eye - the eye with retinal damage so, you know, not my good one - that occasionally spawns admiration and an outburst of joy in customers witnessing it. In really extreme cases, instead of the item on the belt being propelled into space it results in the register keyboard being forced off its base, to the great detriment to the entire expensive machine. Or the fact that due to racks of gum and candy and ragged spots in the trim of the machine large bags of stuff like dog food or bird seed can be snagged and ripped open, spilling all those contents all over the aisle. Hilarity does not ensue. Folks, if the cashier says PLEASE DON’T PUT THAT ITEM ON THE BELT, LEAVE IT IN THE CART it’s not just about weight or convenience or “helping” anyone. Just do what she (or he) says and you might avoid some really annoying problems. PLEASE listen to the nice cashier, instructions are not being given to annoy you.
Anyhow…
Yes. I’m about 98% sure that is the case. As I also work in the cash office I am in a position where I know a bit more about the whole subject than the average cashier (as well as having to deal with the other end of it, managing and tracking loans to tills that have run short of this, that, or the other thing).
It is very much a good thing for the self-checkout lanes which seldom need to go into their drawers.
As I said, I don’t know how it works out for the gas station at this point. I do know that historically the gas stations had problems with running out of quarters. Clearly that has been solved. So… yay?
The problem is the lanes with humans in them. I am well aware that there are people in corporate America that want to do away with human cashiers entirely. (That’s why I also learned how to run a self-checkout machine, work in the cash office, and before I had to take medical leave, I was training on the “gather groceries” part of the pick-up service - I’ve been replaced by technology twice in my life, I’m taking steps to avoid that again.) Such people do not understand why humans are still needed in the loop. I dunno, maybe they’ve never actually been in a grocery store, they live on take-out or something. I suspect there’s a strong overlap with the folks who can’t comprehend that not everyone has a smartphone. Or even a computer. It not just Old Folks - I live only a short way from a substantial Amish community and our stores in the next several counties east of here have to deal with those very much cash-only folks. Then there are the paranoid anti-surveillance folks (just don’t point out the plethora of video cameras in the ceiling, they’re twitchy enough).
Sorry, again I digress…
There’s nothing direct, that is true. There is data there, though, IF you know to look for it. I have on occasion had to determine which drawer(s) received such loans and not only can make the determination most of the time but can even narrow down when it occurred to very narrow windows. Local management can then pull the recent security video to determine exactly when, and who was involved. We do that when something went awry and to address possible remedial training needs. If a lowly peon like me can do that yes, it’s possible but there has to be the will (and perceived need) to do it.
But it’s harder to measure those things than simply number-crunch the automatically supplied data.
According to my management issues with the new till amounts are being brought up in conference calls and, possibly, are making their way up the chain of command. But it’s slow going. Probably be countered with “it’s a new system, you’ll get used to it” and “the holidays mess everything up”. I would not be surprised if at some point in the future this is tweaked. I would not be surprised if that doesn’t happen because the people who make these decisions are not the ones being inconvenienced.
Oh, and the weird swings we’re getting due to the WIC and SNAP funding fiascos is NOT helping as it is definitely skewing our statistics for a number of things. Wait, you say, that’s an electronic benefit it shouldn’t affect cash. First - people still have to eat, and some of our regulars are paying cash given to them by family, friends, neighbors, and various charitable sources so we’ve been having more cash come in even as we are seeing a drop in customers from those who just don’t have any way to pay for groceries. Second, with folks now getting their funds there’s going to be a big pulse of customers NOT using cash. It’s going to give accurate but atypical data.
Some days I really wonder why anyone would want to own/run a grocery store.
In many ways glad to be a “mere” cashier. Just trying to make it through my life long enough to retire. Me and few friends are hoping to run away to the north woods. We have no illusions about that. We will still have problems to deal with. But at least I won’t have to get up before dawn to get screamed at by random, spoiled, entitled idiots during an eight hour shift five days a week.
I was in Chicago years ago and went to a TGIFriday’s for lunch. I ordered a Budweiser and a burger. The place had a “We Card Everybody” policy, and I had ordered a beer, so I had to be carded. I duly produced my Canadian passport that I had used to enter the United States.
“Umm. … I don’t know if we can accept this. I mean, how do I know that it’s real, and not a fake?”
You’re not accepting a passport that is valid in 190+ countries around the world, that your own government allowed me to enter the United States on, and from a country that has a seat at the UN? Because you think it might be fake?
I’m not sure what to say.
Hence my asking you. You’ve got a clue. A Big One.
Thank you for all the facts and insider insights in that post.
I suppose the point of any proffered ID or cash is that if I, the cashier, don’t know what a real [whatever] looks like then I’m logically unable to evaluate if it’s real or fake.
I can tell that you are real. I know Canada is real. I know Canada must have some sort of passport. But I know nothing about what they look like. Ditto Canadian driving licenses. Of course truth be told, that waitperson probably has no specific idea what 48 of the 50 US states’ driving licenses look like either.
If they have some notion they have to be diligent about rejecting fakes, they’re placed in a hard spot without some kind of guide to what a real, e.g. Hawaii driving license or Canadian passport looks like.
At the restaurant - ask her to ask her supervisor if she isn’t sure.
Afterward, come here and type “Some Americans are f***ing idiots”. But since you’re Canadian I’m sure you’ll put it much more politely than I would. 
Thankfully you weren’t from New Mexico.
Our French teacher in high school (70’s) was from France and mentioned that plenty of places insisted on a driver’s license for identification (back when it was computer printing on a pre-printed form, no picture) yet were skeptical of passports. It was even OK to use that driver’s license driving across the border. Obviously, because a passport was not something the average person would see at the time - especially, that would apply in the USA. The proportion of people who had passports until recently was pretty low.
Another point - a lot of third world countries, vendors accept (prefer) US currency. However, the amount of counterfeit currency abroad is quite high. When I was planning trips to Africa or the Middle East, the recommendation at the time was only bills printed after about 2003 that had some extra security features. I recall some article that said the USA is aware of the level of counterfeits, but doesn’t care or even prefers that, because unreliable currency lessens the value of the currency abroad to drug cartels. (And obviously, if brought back into the country is more likely to be detected)