13 August 2010
Making Change
I seem to be quite a terror to cashiers these days.
See, like so many apartment-dwellers, I jealously collect quarters and dollar coins for use in my building’s coin-operated machines. Since I make almost all of our grocery and household purchases in cash, I’m able to generate a pretty good supply.
I also use my elementary math skills to spend whatever change I collect. Yesterday, I stopped by the drugstore to pick up a tube of fancy dentist-recommended enamel-reinforcing toothpaste — since I now refer unnecessarily in certain and self-pitying tones to my future root canal, despite not knowing whether said root canal will occur next visit or in 15 years — costing $5.83 after tax (sigh).
I had a $5 bill and a motley supply of coins that weren’t dollars or quarters, so I handed the cashier the $5, a $2 coin and 8 cents.
And this is where the complete confusion happens. “It’s… $5.83,” he repeated to me, more slowly and this time in English, staring at the money I’d placed on the counter in front of him.
I’ve worked retail. I know that I’m far from the only person to hand over odd-seeming configurations of coins in order to get a more compact array of change back — in fact, it’s where I picked up the technique in the first place. But I almost always get the same blank stare of misunderstanding, and have to bite my tongue to stop from snapping at the cashier to just let the cash register do some basic math for him and to give me back my $1.25.
Instead, I end up saying something obvious like “that should be enough” and giving them a slight eyebrow, which is in return received with varying degrees of sullen incomprehension as we look stubbornly at each other over the counter for a moment, in a silent grudge match, with the money lying between us.
But I persist. Because I’m nothing if not stubborn about maintaining my tiny square of moral high ground, and I do enjoy that extra laundry money.
It’s hard not to tell the cashier how to do his/her job. They don’t hire them for brains.
I’m picturing you giving the cashier a Larry David-style extended stare during this exchange, and that pleases me to no end.
Hilarious.
Aaron, since my tolerance for televised / cinematic awkwardness stops somewhere between the U.K. version of The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm, I’ll only imagine that reference. But I think it’s apt. I thought about this for a while, and the stare / eyebrow is kind of my inevitable response, as passive as I tend to be about other things. The undesirable alternatives are to launch into a patronizing explanation that they really won’t care at all about, or to give in and humbly fork over a $20. And I’ll be damned if I’ll let my tube of toothpaste go down without a fight.
I used to do this before I had an apt with a washer and dryer. I usually just gave them a brief explanation like, “Right, I should get $1.25 back which will mean I can add a quarter to my laundry fund.” Maybe they’re new and no-one has explained it to them. It’s how I learned about saving quarters for laundry day – a nice lady at the retail store where I worked explained it.
… or I guess there’s giving the cashiers the benefit of the doubt and being nice!
When I worked retail, I always entered whatever amount of money I was given. I never asked for a few pennies or whatever to make it easier. Because I did not trust my computational abilities, for one thing, and I recognized it was possible the customer had a plan. Just punch the numbers and don’t ask any questions, I say.