That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. (At least in my opinion, and this certainly is the forum for that.)
I work at a casino. I work as a cashier at a casino. Last night, I had to balance $170,000 (that’s counting lots of money) in my window. IIRC, (and I’m pretty sure I do) $1000 of that was one dollar bills. I would rather scoop my own eyeballs out with a disease infected spork and eat them than count ONE THOUSAND Sackies. Why? Because you can’t put them in a jetsort (it’s that handy machine that counts coin for you). I can put one thousand one dollar bills in my cash counter and have it count them for me.
Let’s say I did have to count 1000 Sackies. This, because of casino policy, is how it would go. I would have to take them and put them in “stacks” of five, with four stacks in each “barrel”. That’s $20. I would have to then put each $20 barrel in a “rack”. Five barrels per rack = $100 per rack. I would have to do that TEN TIMES. Then I would have to take one barrel out of each rack and stack them AGAIN! I would then have to take my finger and run it over the stacks, to prove that they are all the same height. Then I’d have to take one of the stacks and “splash” it, to prove that there are five coins in each stack. I would have to do that TEN TIMES. After all that, I would finally be done counting my Sackies. But I’d still have another $169,000 to count. In the time it’d take me to count all those damn coins, I could have counted the entire window. Twice. At the end of the night, if we are unfortunate enough to receive Sackies, they go to the bank with the rest of our “junk”. I think that alone says it all.
We don’t accept large amounts of pennies or dimes though. If someone has five dimes and wants nickels for it, it’s allowed, but you can’t bring $10 in pennies and expect us to count them. (They (pennies and dimes) don’t go in the jetsort either.)
Even our cash counters seperate different denominations, and those have to be like 15-20 years old. I suppose I could find out at work tonight.
And who the hell carries around one hundred dollar bills, anyway? Especially to a MOVIE THEATER! And justifying the replacement of dollar bills by saying that they won’t go through because they’re torn or worn? Please. Take the five or ten that won’t go through out of your strap of ONE HUNDRED (which means that you didn’t have to manually count 90-95% of them) and count them, mentally adding those to the total on your cash counter. How long does it take to count 10 one dollar bills? Like 10 seconds, right? Then you take those torn and worn dollars, and you turn them in to your supervisor so that they can sell them to your town’s bank, so that they can send them along the proper channels to eventually be taken out of circulation and destroyed.
I love the idea of Sackies. I’m really sick and tired of not being able to buy a friggin’ cup of coffee without pulling out my wallet. Coins used to be able to actually buy things, nowadays, they’re chaff, gathering dust in bottles and cups around the country. Hell, those Coinstar machines take a 9% cut just for counting your coins, 'cause people can’t be bothered to deal with them personally they’re so worthless.
I want coins that are worth something!
Me buying a candybar: Plunk, Plunk, search for more coins, Plunk, Plunk, Plunk, Plunk, get candy bar
I can’t believe all you whiny men bitching and moaning over carrying things in your pockets. You, for whom society actually makes pockets in nearly every article of dressier clothing. Well, here’s an idea - you, too, can carry a purse. Haul all the Sackies you want in it. I like 'em - or I would, if you people would let go of yours stashes so they’d circulte. Keep your cel phone in it, as opposed to in that ridiculous little holster. You could also keep your keys in it and not jingle down the hallway. It would save you from that wierd haul-the-wallet-out-of-your-pants-at-a-restaurant-wiggle, too. No more jealousy on my part, either, when I’m glued to my pocketbook and you don’t have to be.
My wallet wore out, and since loonies had become common, I replaced it with a purse. Of course it had to be a guy type purse, for I’m a guy. So I wandered about for a few months using old, small ziploc sandwich baggies. Drove my s.o. nuts to the point that she went out a bought me a wallet, which I dutifully use. So don’t say I didn’t try.
Flymaster - I guess I was wrong. I can’t find any online articles stating that vending machine makers were opposed to the coin. But I do remember reading that while makers of vending machines like coins in principle, in practice they haven’t spent the money to convert existing machines to use dollar coins (most of the vending machines I see don’t accept dollar coins, with the exception of transit authorities and/or the post office) and don’t want to do so because the american public doesn’t carry coins around in sufficient quantities to make it worthwhile.
Never been in a stripjoint, eh Zsofia? When you’re sitting at the bar, they come by every 3 minutes. That’s 20 bucks in an hour if you don’t go to the bathroom. If you’re tipping 5 dollars, that’s a friggin $100!
Top things predicted to be a big hit/improvement in America:
Soccer
The Metric System
Sacagawea coins
Generally, Americans are just stubborn, I guess, and don’t want to change things (like all people, I guess). I wouldn’t say I hate the Sacky’s any more than I hate two dollar bills; they’re both so rarely used that it’s mostly a moot point.
…and all she ever got for her efforts was her land taken away by the government and a gold coin with her image emblazoned on it about 200 years later. Yeah, I would say that she got screwed over!
I’d rather have machines that take sacs than those abominations that take dollar bills. At least with the coin you don’t have to put it in the correct alignment, make sure to ‘iron’ out as many wrinkles as possible, make sure the corners aren’t folded in, or (the one that REALLY irks me) take your new, crisp bill and put wrinkles and folds INTO it to get the machine to take it. And then, after doing all of this it STILL won’t take your bill, sorry, you’re not getting a soda today. Coin venders (vendors?) are much more reliable.
What the mint needs to do is get off their collective reverses and start minting $5 and $10 dollar coins-- nobody will complain about them being too “heavy” and it will make prospecting under sofa cushions profitable yet again.
If you want to buy a roll of sackies, be forewarned they typically cost more than face value. That’s right-- you have to pay money to buy money from the mint.
Somebody let me know if they can buy rolls of 25 sackies in the mint paper for $25… My guess is no. The mint sells them for around $35 including shipping. I suspect the reason is to remove the arbitrage factor from coin dealers/speculators/ebay fanatics…
Having said all that, I like the Sacajawea dollar and I did vote on the design during the feedback period at the mints web site- http://www.usmint.gov
I hope the coin does well, even if it is only made of copper and closely resembles both in composition and size to the nations first penny Gotta love inflation kids…
Well, first, I’ll state that I’ve never had a real big problem getting dollars to work in machines. Yes, I’ve had SOME difficulty, but nothing worth minting a new coin for.
However, even granting you the point you’ve made above, you’re not really providing the best solution. Ideally, we should be moving towards a cashless society, in which we could merely swipe a debit card through the machine, and get our coke in a jiffy.
This would deal with the vendors’ problems, the mint’s cost problems, the issues that the blind have with telling one bill from another, parents’ problems teaching their kids money management, and virtually every other problem that money causes to everyone today. It would be the perfect solution. But I haven’t seen the MINT, the people with the power to institute such a system, take an active stance towards this solution. And this is a real shame, IMHO.
I like the idea of being able to use a dollar coin as a subway or tollboth token. I hate visiting a city where I have to buy tokens because If I don’t use them while I’m there, I just wasted that money.
actually it seems that most municipal and federal machines give Susan b Anthony’s and the new sackies as change
this is for 2 reasons 1 the machine i less likely to be robbed if every one ones its nothing but coins and 2 its an easy way to get them into circulation on a side note there also making Susan b Anthony’s again because the ones i get from the mass transit system metrolink have a date that’s either 1977 or 2000
An amusing situation occurred though when I wen to a ticket seller in the main la station to buy a ticket home and using the dollars I got from the machine it took 10 minutes to show this lady that they were dollar coins … she had never seen one and hadn’t o clue that the machines gave them out this being la county didn’t suprise anyone in the least
I hate the new coins and any other coins that don’t work in all vending machines. I do agree that with Marlyn Monroe on the coin, it wouldn’t be half bad. For a $5 coin they could go with James Dean. Just don’t let them see you drive away on anything other than a genuine Harley.
Change purses are for women, and coins get heavy in the pockets. I suggest the use of coin changers that fit on the man’s belt, and hold all the coin denomonations being given away at the places using the stinking coins.“We want you to switch to these, so here’s a holder to carry the damn things.” Make sure their emblasened with the Harley Davidson logo so the user doesn’t seem like a wuss. Anybody that will accept over $20 in these coins gets a free pair of leather chaps or jacket with the above logo.
So fully dressed as a real man in Harley Davidson gear, you whip out the correct change with the $1 Marlyn Monroe coin, and the $5 James Dean coin.
They really need to go for the “This is cool look.”, instead of the historical political correct figures.
Don’t forget that U.S. legal tender doesn’t mean you have to except payment with it. It just means it is legal tender in all states, unlike Bank Notes issued by privite banks.
For the clerk at the store that gave me all those $2 bills last year, and I refused them, your explanation sucked. I asked them to give me money that worked in vending machines, and they told me everybody likes these, and many ask for all their change in $2 bills. I told them “I don’t, Bull Shit, give me $1 bills, and if I want a $2 bill the bank will give me one. I don’t need them as a middle man”. These idiots ask the bank for $2 bills ever day they go to the bank.
It’s legal for all debts, public and private. What that means in practical terms is you most certainly have to take it as change-- Whatever it is you bought was a voluntary transaction on your part. If you didn’t want a two-dollar bill as change, personally I wouldn’t give you any change back at all, if I was feeling especially crabby. Course, I’ve never worked retail…
Two-dollar bills are great, since so many people think they are “fake”; ala “I want my two dollars back” hilarious…
Keep your cel phone in it, as opposed to in that ridiculous little holster. You could also keep your keys in it and not jingle down the hallway. It would save you from that wierd haul-the-wallet-out-of-your-pants-at-a-restaurant-wiggle, too. No more jealousy on my part, either, when I’m glued to my pocketbook and you don’t have to be.