Today, I had a long drive ahead of me and needed gas. I bought gas, paid at the pump, and then thought a Coke would make the drive a little easier. So I went in the store attached to the gas station and tried to buy a Coke.
The Coke was $2. I handed the cashier a $20 bill. He told me he couldn’t make change for a $20. Did I have anything smaller?
I didn’t, and since I wasn’t willing to put a $2 Coke on plastic, I didn’t get my Coke. And I was stunned. This is a convenience store–smokes, newspapers, snacks, soft drinks, and so on. And this guy couldn’t change a $20 bill on a Sunday afternoon. It’s not a bad neighbourhood, there is very little crime, and there are other businesses that are used to cash (McDonald’s, Starbucks, a video store) in the same plaza. If it was midnight, I might see why–you want to keep minimal cash on hand at those times. But I’ve worked retail, and I know about floats, and there was no reason I could see why a gas bar/convenience store couldn’t make change for a $20 in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.
It’s been a long time since I’ve worked in a convenience store, but at the small retail shop I work at now, we are often stuck on a Sunday if our first customer breaks a $100 and cleans us out of all our $10, $5’s and most of our ones. Unless we close down to try to get change from one of the food court places, we are pretty much sunk for the rest of the day. We keep a very small drawer…under $150…and one or two large bills for small perchases can wipe out our change.
Two bucks for a Coke? Wow. I had no idea I have overcome my sodapop habit so completeley.
Once I got over that, I’d have made a quick mental assessment of the locale of the store (how far from a population center, time of day, day of the week, etc), and let either let it go or have a polite hissy fit, in writing, to corporate headquarters.
In The Middle of Nowhere ™, I would have stopped the pump just before I knew it would be full, then gone inside to pee, and pay for my ninety seven cents of gas and two dollar Coke. I’m a hick, and used to being in the Middle of Nowhere ™.
In town, I’d have smiled with a severely arched eyebrow, grumbled to myself until the next gas station and written a polite hissy-fit letter to corporate, being sure to not bitch about the cashier who was stuck with a short drawer because of a lazy manager.
let me check the cash drawer where i work. Oh oh. I can’t change a 20 out of my 300.00 bank a $100.00 and 140 in $20s and the rest coins an petty cash slips.
Way back in the day, when I worked solo at a small convenience store, I had $19 in bills and sundry loose change in my drawer at any given time. Everything else I was instructed to drop into the drop safe. Granted, I worked the midnight shift alone in an iffy part of town, but a lot of places have a policy that prevents the cashier from keeping much cash in their drawer. If needed, I could drop a roll of bills or coins from the safe, but it had a 3 minute delay between drops, so impatient armed robbers wouldn’t get much. And “excessive” drops would be noticed and questioned by the manager.
I’ve worked in a convenience store and in a small retail shop. In both stores, they made night deposits even on weekends. This not only reduces the chance of a robber getting all of the weekend’s cash, it also reduces the temptation to the store employees. At least, so all my accounting and management textbooks say so.
I can’t count how many times someone wanted to buy the cheapest item in the convenience store with a twenty or even fifty or hundred dollar bill. The managers and owner would write up a cashier if she had a twenty in her till, as we were supposed to drop such bills IMMEDIATELY into our safe. We were also not allowed to have more than about $30 in our tills, again, we were supposed to drop the excess into the safe. Everyone in the neighborhood who shopped at that store knew that we didn’t keep much money in the tills. This was part of our protection against robberies.
At the retail store, again, we made the nightly deposits. Why take a chance on getting robbed? And if someone wanted to buy a $5 pair of panties with a hundred dollar bill, well, if we could change it easily we would. But if changing the bill meant that we’d have no change for our other customers, we’d have to offer a gift certificate for the balance.
I also worked as a cashier in a movie theater. Again, we had a safe, and we were supposed to drop all twenties into it when we got them (this was when matinees were $3.50 and evenings were $5-6 for adults). In case of fire, we were supposed to gather up all the money in the till and drop it in the safe, and THEN get the hell out of there. I personally felt that if I was in danger, then I was gonna be gone, and the money would just have to look after itself.
I am going to guess that FatBaldGuy is correct, and that someone else paid with a twenty, and the cashier just didn’t have enough customers to build the drawer back up.
When I get walking around money, I make sure to get some fives and ones if I’m running low.
What would I think? That I had lousy timing. Cashiers don’t have infinite change, and there are indeed runs on small bills. It sucks when you’re given a till of $40 in ones, and the first two customers of the day pay with twenties.
Even when I was a bank teller, I’d sometimes run out of something. I once had a depositor try to get me fired when all I had on-hand was $90 in quarters and he wanted $100, and had to wait and extra 2 minutes for me to request more from the vault.
The depositor was, of course, an asswipe to begin with.
Any business with a brain would refuse a $100 bill unless the goods were over $80. Sorry, I don’t have enough change to break anything over a $20. Thanks for stopping.
There is no earthly reason to carry anything in your wallet over a $20 bill unless you plan on buying stuff that comes close to the denomination.
It’s strange but if they were somewhat apologetic and took credit cards w/o a minimum then I wouldn’t think it was a big deal. I’m happy to put a $2 Coke on my credit card, thats 2 cents cash back for me.
I’d have used my debit card* to buy the Coke, then - it would practically cost the store money in that case. I don’t think much of a place that won’t change a twenty in that situation, though, since all most bank machines will give us are twenties.
*Canadian version of debit card - Spoons knows what I’m talking about.
It wasn’t just a Sunday afternoon, it was the Sunday afternoon of a 4 day weekend. I’d be annoyed at the universe in general, but understanding that it was not unlikely for change to be scarce at the time.
I’m afraid up here in The Great White North, it was not a long weekend – our Thansgiving is in October.
If the place you’re describing is where I think it is, up at the top of the hill on Country Meadows, east of the golf course, then you are in the heart of a whole mess of middle-to- upper-middle class neighbourhoods. Their not being able to make change on a $20 is stupid. Having said that, as we move more and more into bank cards as the norm for everything, I suspect that being able to actually use cash will become increasingly difficult. I mean, the banks don’t get paid every time you pay for something with actual money – that simply WILL NOT STAND!
I think I’d be pissed off enough with that lack of a transaction to take my business elsewhere. Plenty more gas stations where that came from!
Psst–look at my location. I’m in Canada, where it wasn’t a four-day weekend.
Featherlou, I thought about using my Interac card, but I’ve been to this gas station many times before and so I know from experience that its card reader is faulty and has never read my card. (One of the reason I pay at the pump at this station is because the pump’s card reader, on the other hand, works flawlessly.) Cash is the only way I can buy anything in this store, and yesterday, I couldn’t even do that.
I guess it was either (a) a lousy management policy that said “keep less than $10 on hand,” or (b) bad preparation on the part of the clerk–he should have seen that his float was getting low, and done something to rectify the problem. The fact that the clerk said nothing like, “Oh, we’re short now but can you come back in ten minutes?” (or similar) leads me to believe choice (a) is the most likely reason. I can certainly understand if somebody with a large denomination bill cleans out the clerk’s float, but there should be some procedure in place to deal with such things. This is a national gas station/convenience store chain, and while I might expect something like I encountered from a small independent, I don’t see any reason for any station in the Petro-Canada chain not to have procedures in place for such an occurrence.
Oh, I should have added that I did eventually get my Coke–at a different gas station/convenience store that had absolutely no problem at all with taking my $20 and giving me $18 and a Coke in return.
Many places won’t accept credit cards for totals of less than a certain amount. I don’t know about this place, but I have the feeling that they would have something like that in place. I also don’t like putting small things on my credit card. That’s my choice, and if it came down to getting a $2 Coke and a credit card charge, or not getting a Coke and not having a $2 charge on my credit card bill, I’ll choose the latter.
I’ve been a cashier for years, in similar places to the one described in the OP. I’ve never been quite as low as that cashier was, but I’ve been close. One big problem is with chickenshit cashiers who are afraid to refuse to take hundreds. Sure, if I have the change in twenties, I’ll take your hundred as payment for your chips and Coke. But if breaking that hundred will take all my fives and ones, forget it. Too many people I work with will just cavalierly give out $75.00 in fives and 15 singles, without even thinking about it. This leads to the OP’s situation.
I don’t think much of a place that won’t change a twenty in that situation, though, since all most bank machines will give us are twenties.