Making change

[dougo]

Today I bought a sandwich for $6.25. In my wallet was a $20 bill and five singles, so I gave the cashier $22. She looked at me like I was crazy, and tried to give me back the two singles. I convinced her to take them, so she gave me back a $10 bill and 75 cents. Eventually I convinced her to give me back a $5 bill also.

Am I crazy to want to lighten my wallet when possible? Am I making cashiers' lives harder by not just giving the single smallest bill that's more than the charge?

I'd rather they just subtract credits from the chip in my arm, but the deli isn't equipped to do that yet.

Comments

[jfb.livejournal.com]

I did a lot of this on the trip, but not always. I noticed myself applying some quick heuristics in which I estimated the intelligence of the cashier, the intelligence of the cash register, and the dependence of the former on the latter to do math. Some people are smart enough to understand what you're trying to do; other people aren't, but they just punch in the numbers and give you the amount of change the machine tells them to. It's the ones in the middle you've got to watch out for.