Plan B Forum

On the way home I stopped at the store to pick up some Ice Cream for the wife.

It rang up $7.23.

I handed the girl a 10 and she started reaching for the till.

I said I have a quarter and handed it to her.

She looked back at me confused and said "I don't know how much that is, how much would that be?"

I said $3.02 (I could have said anything and gotten it), I then said give me the bills you can keep the change.

Eyes glazed over, give me $3.00.

I do not feel secure...

Keld, if this is the first time this has happened to you, you've been leading a charmed life...

When I hand over a bill and change (to avoid getting back a bunch more change...or a larger bill and a one or two ones in order to avoid getting more ones) I get the deer in the headlights hesitation about half the time...

If I see the cashier pausing, I no longer wait for them to ask or figure it out; I just automatically spit out what the change is supposed to be.

Even worse, I handed some rock-brained teen *exact change* last week for a small transaction, and he didn't have any idea how to count it.

Might be the small town thing.. Here you hand over the notes and say I have the coin and the person behind the counter will often say thanks..
Even better in one place the woman that owns the shop will ask if you want to dump any excess coin, Easier for me if you count out the right change"

Mental arithmetic is a dying art.

I remember working in a bookstore in high school, the stores on the street were having a sidewalk sale so we had to set up an old cash register from the basement, of the type that only rang up the total and did not allow for the entry of the cash tendered and the display of the resultant change. Making change out of the till that way can take some thinking if you're not used to it, but I was not prepared to witness a girl I worked with take a dollar from a customer for a 50 cent newspaper, and stand there looking completely clueless as to how to make the correct change.

I wasn't surprised when, for a variety of reasons, the owner recognized that the job wasn't for her, and let her go.

Counting change out is a dead art.

Irritating too is when the teen lays the paper bills in your hand the piles the change on top of that so you have to carefully balance as you pull your hand back in the window.

It really is easier not to bother. The bill is $7.05, you give them a $10, the till tells them how much change to give.

But if one more till kid gives me a sour face, as I've dared to distract them from their reading of "Celebrity Magazine, "who is skinny or fat this week" special", I swear I'll piss in their till.

In my experience they often ask, if the amount is say $10.05 and you hand them a twenty, if you have the 5c so they can give you $10 change. It's when you say "No, but I have a 10c" that the fun begins!

sorry, still catching up
I remember back before cash registers told the person how much change to give and I was trying to teach a girlfriend of mine how to make change for a possible job at Roy Rogers where I worked. Like, if the bill is 5.76 and they hand you a 10, (or any amount as it just works). All you have to do is start at the bill amount and continue to extract money from the register until you get to the amount they gave you and you start with getting to whole dollar bills and work your way up to 5's then 10's etc depending on the amount given to pay for the item. She never did "get it" and never did get the job.

So in the example the bill is 5.76 and they gave a 10. One would count out 4 pennies to make 5.80 then 2 dimes to make it 6.00 then 4 one dollar bills to make it 10 (the amount they gave you to pay.)