Why are you counting my money!? (Semi-long).

[Plaidman]

So, a customer comes in and wants a pack of ciggerretes.

SC: *plops large bag on counter. Its filled with pennies* I swear there is 5 dollars here.

ME: Ok. *puts cigs to side. Starts counting the pennies*

SC: ...what are you doing?

ME: Counting the pennies.

SC: Your going to count them!? I never heard of that! No-one ever done that. They just take it.

ME: Ok. Too many years of people lying jaded me. I'm counting.

SC: That's bullshit! Your going to make me wait!? You think I'm going to cheat you pennies?!

ME: I've had people cheat me product. Its not a big deal to wait.

SC: I've COUNTED THEM! TWICE!

ME: Ok. Fine. You distracting me is going to take it longer.

(Another customer waiting to do bottle returns chips in) Hey man, he just doing his job!

SC: NO one has EVER DONE THIS!. I'm trying to help my neighbor, a OLD MAN mind you, and he thinks I'm going to lie about all these! You can feel the weight man! Its FIVE dollars!

ME: And nobody honest ever complained about me counting their pennies.

Ad hoc, ad hoc, ad hoc, complain, bitch complain bitch. I finally finish counting his pennies.

He was short.

Fifty cents.

He groans, pisses, and throws two quarters at me, grabs his cigs and charges out. Comes back momentary later, and grabs a bag of 1.29 chips. Pays with a ten.

I tell him thank you and have a good day. He just goes whatever.

The strange and funny thing is, the lady doing the bottle returns had more then the limit we have. I took them all for waiting, and for trying to defend me. She wanted to get two two-liters of soda (and something else I can't remember), and had a bag of pennies.

Lady: I know your have to count them, but there really is just 2 dollars.

I indeed counted them, she didnt complained and even made minor small talk. Guess what she had? Exactly 2 dollars. Mind you I've never had a problem with this bottle returner, and once she made small talk with me outside in the freezing cold while the store was tempory closed when the cleaners were cleaning.

[Lace Neil Singer]

I won't take a bag of pennies. I just tell people to head over the road to the main store where there's a coinstar machine. My manager will back me up, cuz that amount of small change is a pain in the butt to fit in the till and other customers get tetchy about having to wait for it to be counted.

[Plaidman]

I totally agree, and I use to refuse. However, one of the refused called our corporate number. My district and area manager indeed was no happy and wrote me up. Didn't matter I had nowhere to put 1000 pennies. I'm required to take it. Just like we are now required to take 100 dollar bills for a .25 item.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Maybe they need to go back to the floor for a shift and find out for themselves how irritating it is. -.-

[MelodiousBubbles]

We're a small store, so what our owner says, goes. It's at the cashier's discretion whether or not they accept loose coins or not. Half the time, the shiftleaders say no before the cashiers have a chance to since, well, "we're not a bank" as the owner and the FE manager says.

[bankworking]

Back when the loose coin counter cost money for customers to use, whenever anyone brought up a pile of loose coin we were allowed to present them with a pile of coin wrappers and ask them to roll them up first. Managers said we only had to count coins when it looked like there wasn't enough to put into rolls.

The crazy part was that the first thing we'd do after getting the rolls would be to break them open and run them through the loose coin counter to make certain they were correct. (Except for quarters. Quarters we'd compare to another roll and feel down it for sideways turned or wrong-sized coins, then put in our drawers since we get requests for rolls of quarters all the time.)

It's easy now. If you have an account, the loose coin counter is free, so we can just send anyone will a pile of un-rolled change there first.

[BossLady]

Am I evil for thinking that when he needed change for the $10 I would have given back his pennies as part of the change ?

[Kristev]

Ooh, you're wicked.

[ChaoKuang]

Am I evil for thinking that when he needed change for the $10 I would have given back his pennies as part of the change ?

I probably would have done exactly that.

[Zoom]

Now that there's a Coinstar (tm) in my store, anyone with too much change no longer has to stand and wait for me to finish counting them.

Now they have the convenience of getting their order suspended, go over to the Coinstar (tm), stand there like an idiot because it's their first time using it, finally figure out to press the button marked Start, accidentally hit the button marked Donate, try a couple of times to find the Cancel button to stop a donation, grumble intently at the nine-cents-on-the-dollar fee, upend their bag of change in the tray, stand there while the change sits there in the tray, figure out to raise the handle to tip the coins into the slot, complain volubly at the foreign coins that spew out of the rejection tray and how they could not have been in their bag, wait for the machine to finish counting, get the printout, barge back into the front of my line, and be told in no uncertain terms that our registers no longer take Coinstar (tm) and they have to redeem it at the service desk.

Of course, I still have to deal with rolled coin, which deceptively and always has the wrong amount in it. The correct rolled coin has a certain stripey wrapper which fits around the end coins tightly so you know it has the correct amount. But most people insist on using unofficial dark-colored paper which just folds at the ends so it could be off.

Anyway, one must open those things instead of accept them at face value, because buried in the roll of quarters are a few nickels. Every time.

Oh, BTW, I also use Coinstar (tm) on occasion (too much change at home) and I never, ever mix foreign money into it, but I swear the machine spews out coins I could never have had in the first place... mostly from Poland (we have a lot of Polish customers in the neighborhood). Something wrong with the machine's ethics.

[joe hx]

When I was a kid and before I had a job, I would gather all the change in the house I could find (laundry room was the best, since my mom would put change she found in people's pockets on the shelf. second best was on top of the microwave for some reason). I would then get coin wraps from banks. I know you can buy them, but why if the bank just gives them out for free? I would then wrap my coins, take them to the bank and exchange them for dollar bills. That, combined with money from Christmas and birthdays, was my spending money.

[42_42_42]

This could be incorrect, but the store manager at the bagel shop I worked at in college told me that no one is required to accept more than 25 cents in pennies.

[Racket_Man]

try having someone pay for a $29 and change pizza delivery order with a Zip-Loc bag of coins and no paper money.

they must have cleaned out the couch three times, broke 2 piggy banks, went to the laund-o-mat and picked through the dryers.

[mattm04]

Am I evil for thinking that when he needed change for the $10 I would have given back his pennies as part of the change ?

No, not at all.

[Anakah]

If they require you guys to take that much change maybe they should give you jetsorts--money counters. I know it will never happen but it would be nice.