BJohnsen wrote:

Babyrat, I'll be mighty surprised if you find anyone who wants to lug that much coinage half way around the world.

At 200g I would (usually my suitcase is lightweight on the way out to leave space for bringing back books on the way home ;-)) but (a) no travel plans currently and (b) faff and postage probably make it not worth it unless by some fluke Babyrat lived in Cambridge.

Jarvik7 wrote:

True, but it annoys cashiers when you treat them like an exchange service, which is why they give the look or ignore the extra money (they do it in Japan too).
-former cashier

It's interesting how different things can be in different places. Here it's not uncommon that on seeing me getting out of the pocket a handful of coins I usually forget about and end up collecting in numbers, cashiers actually look at those with greedy eyes and ask if they could take all of those instead of the paper bills I'm offering. Seems they are out of coins and small value paper bills frequently, so they are more than willing to count and take few dozens of coins off me at a time.

I don't say it's the case in 100% of the time. There are times they'd rather deal with round incoming numbers. But it happens often enough.

bodhisamaya wrote:

The cell phone use while ringing me up never seemed appropriate though.

How are they going to ring you up without using a phone? :-)

iAurora wrote:

Jarvik7 wrote:

True, but it annoys cashiers when you treat them like an exchange service, which is why they give the look or ignore the extra money (they do it in Japan too).
-former cashier

It's interesting how different things can be in different places. Here it's not uncommon that on seeing me getting out of the pocket a handful of coins I usually forget about and end up collecting in numbers, cashiers actually look at those with greedy eyes and ask if they could take all of those instead of the paper bills I'm offering. Seems they are out of coins and small value paper bills frequently, so they are more than willing to count and take few dozens of coins off me at a time.

I don't say it's the case in 100% of the time. There are times they'd rather deal with round incoming numbers. But it happens often enough.

What I was referring to wasn't exact change or giving enough money so you get reduced change back (cashiers like that since they don't have to do any mental math or dig in the till for lots of coins), but the practice of dumping a LOT of extra change, to effectively use the cashier as an exchange service. Ex: paying 1337en for an item that cost 337en, so you can get a note back instead of your handful of shrapnel.

There are times when the till balance gets messed up (usually caused by a shortage of  the smaller bills caused by many customers paying with large bills for small purchases) and you'll want more coins from the customer, but it's not super common unless the store is poorly run (no coin reserve or auto-safe). Maintaining till balance is actually very hard without a reserve or auto-safe, and reserves are very dangerous to keep (tempting robbery targets). Several times I had to give customers their change in the form of rolls of coins, since they came in and bought a cheap item with a $100 bill right at closing when most of the money was already safe-dropped. Paying with appropriate denominations is courtesy and not just a matter of having to pry the clerk off their phone.

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2010 March 03, 5:44 am)