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

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I wasn't actually saying anything about her intelligence; I regularly get tangled up in arithmetic simply trying to calculate the tip, and that's not at the end of a lunch rush. Also I'm not very good at making sandwiches, let alone wrapping them up so they won't leak.

Anyway, my questions weren't actually rhetorical: I really was trying to figure out whether what I was doing was strange and/or pointless. And I think I've decided that carrying a $5 bill instead of five singles is a pretty trivial thing to care about, and not worth the potential social friction caused by cleverly trying to arrange it.

[perci.livejournal.com]

Actually I was referring to some of your respondents' remarks about intelligence, not yours.

I'm thinking the only real social friction you create when you do this is probably making your transaction take an extra 15 seconds, which around these parts seems to be enough time to piss off the people behind you in line, which is their problem; they'd also be pissed if you used the 15 seconds by asking for mustard or something.