We’ve all seen them. Little trays by the register full of pennies. The sign says to take or leave a penny as you need.
Which do you find yourself doing more:
Take a penny or pennies.
Leave a penny or pennies.
Neither.
I confess, I am a slug and tend to use them more than I leave them. Although I guess to be fair to me, if I take some one day I try to leave some the next time I’m in.
I leave them more than I take them. It’s not virtue, but habit. I tend to use bills to pay for things, and to dump the change in the bottom of my purse. Once a week, I clean out my purse and dump the change in the basket on the kitchen counter. When that gets heavy, I empty it, put the change in those little paper cylinders, get it changed at the bank, and use the bills. So if I get pennies back in change, and there’s a dish there, I dump them in there instead.
I use them if I owe $7.02 or something, and there are two pennies sitting there. I figure I’ve earned them.
I don’t think I’ve ever really done either. Maybe once or twice the cashier has reached in to grab a penny if it makes my change easier, but I’ve never done it myself.
I leave almost all my pennies everywhere I go, I am a penny whore like that. I really don’t care about money in general, so it’s easy for me not to be bothered by any.
Even my poor college attending ex-gf could care less for pennies. She would sneak up behind me and give me a hug, then I would turn around to give her a smooch and I’d feel a hand in my pocket.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you looking for silver change?”
Looking guilty, “… yes”
She’d go nuts for quarters. Not bj nuts, but it fought off the dogs of hell for a short while.
Neither. My hometown is on an Indian reservation, so it’s fairly easy to find leather tobacco pouches that can also serve as places to hold coins. (BTW, they’re not coin purses. Coin purses are used by old ladies and are snapped open.)
Take.
But I mostly pay for things with my debit, and I only ever even notice the tray if I’m looking around for one cause I need a penny… I leave* sometimes,* though…
okay, I’m a bad person, I admit it!
I have never seen a take a penny leav a penny thing.
But what if you wanted some gum and you just emptied the penny tray on the counter to pay for it?
I don’t do either. I’m one of those nutters who keeps change and spends it as I get it. I never have more than 4 pennies in my wallet, and if I don’t have one and I need just one to get (say) an even dollar back, no problem and it doesn’t bother me. I take the 99 cents, and use the pennies next time I need one.
I do leave pennies on occasion though, if I’ve absentmindedly closed my wallet and gotten something like 3 pennies back - since it’s easier than opening my purse, finding and opening my wallet, putting pennies in, zipping up wallet, putting it back and zipping up my purse again. I figure that if I have to do all that, the work to do so is worth more than the 3 pennies. It depends on what I have to do at the time I guess.
This answer was way too long for such a simple question, wasn’t it?
I’ve never done either. I can’t remember the last time I used money to buy something, and got change back. It’s been at least the length of my marriage, which is going on 10 years. I do everything on the debit card. I never have any change, which is OK because I hate to jingle when I walk anyway.
Leave. I am so flippin’ anal retentive, if I don’t have exact change, I will pay with bills or my debit to avoid using charity. It’s not a virtue, as others have said, just the way I am.
On a related note – one morning, I wandered into my local $tarbucks (where they know me quite well) and realised that I did not have my wallet in my purse as I was about to pay. I dug through my purse and found $3 even – my drink costs 3.22 -- the manager (who happened to be working the register) just laughed his adorable british laugh and said "we're not worried about the change, have a great day!). To be fair, on the occasions when I pay with bills, all my change goes in the tip jar, so it's not like that .22 was never in the store, right? But I felt horrid. The next morning, I paid $3.44 for my drink, because I have worked retail and loathe a short drawer.
I can’t recall ever leaving or taking.
I use a credit card for every purchase if possible.
I do seem to recall in the dim past that cashiers have taken pennies on their own initiative to make my change easier? rounder?
About 50-50. I use 'em at my local store if I’m short a penny or two and if I get a few pennies in my change I generally toss them in the tray. It all evens out.
Leave them. I hate change and will drop them in the tray if I notice one but never take from it unless the cashier notices I’m looking for change and does so his or herself.
I leave (or if it accumulates, donate to charity) any money I find on the ground. This runs anywhere from around a dollar to around three dollars a month, depending how bad the weather is (if it’s bad, people don’t pick up change they spill around parking meters).
I leave pennies all the time.
I leave them more often than I take them, but I do take them on occasion.
I’ve never seen one of those things in this country. It’s an interesting idea. All I see here is little money boxes for charities.
That sounds like something that would have worked here about 50 years or more ago. Now, those trays would be emptied in seconds.
Change sucks. I’ve been known to dig through my pockets to find pennies to leave. Heck, I leave the occasional nickel as well.
So, is this stricktly a USAian thing then? To answer Tonedef’s question, I have never in my entire life seen anyone dump out the whole tray to pay for something. If someone did that (without an appologetic preface about how poor off and deperate they are that day or something), I would probably just call them an ass behind their back after they left.
I do both, although I leave more since I leave pennies even when isn’t a “Give a penny, take a penny” tray. If there isn’t one, I simply leave them on the counter for the next person to use. Pennies are annoying. And so are dimes, due to their size.