So you DIDN'T need the money?

[WishfulSpirit]

I deal with these people way too much, and it's never just for odd pennies as our fares round to 5 or 10. No, usually it's a pound or more! Sorry but if you can't afford the fare to the next stop (just a mile up the road) then you need to seek an alternate route; I hear walking is still free?

I'm curious about this. I assume this is public transit as you mentioned "stops." How does increasing fare with more stops work for you? I'm genuinely curious. Here a one-way pass is good for three hours on any local bus (we have a few crosstown express ones that have a higher price) and/or within 2 adjacent rail zones. Within those parameters, there's no limit on how many stops you can go. The fare covers one stop down or 20 stops down as long as the service is either local bus or inside the same two train zones.

A system where the fare went up for each stop (if I'm understanding how your system works) would confuse the heck out of me.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Here at The Client, there's a little tag you can get for free, which you can load money on at automated kiosks, and then use to buy food at the cafeteria or at the vending machines here at the Mothership. (At some of the outlying parts of the "fleet," the vending machines don't have that feature.) So I rarely have change these days (though I keep a little jar of quarters at my desk for emergencies).

But before then, I tended to keep change in my pocket, and if I wasn't looking for exact bills as change, I was always trying to round up the pennies so I'd get "silver" coins as change instead, paying out the pennies I'd get elsewhere to do so.

Like many others in this thread, it boggles my mind that EWs are expecting the cashiers to "let it slide." It would never occur to me to pay less than the amount the register shows.

Sigh.

[Terza]

I do sometimes let taxi drivers get away with not paying the penny on say £20.01 fuel, but that's because when they put £19.99 in they don't want the penny back. Or they'll leave me a handful of pennies/twopences even if they're paying the right price, because they know we'll let them slide at another time.
Mind you, these are local companies, where we'll see the same drivers shift after shift, so we have a good working relationship with them and our manager encourages it. We also exchange £1 or £5 with them for larger notes if either of us is short, because again good working relationship.

Regular customers also do the same thing occasionally and again it's allowed because it's reciprocal (and again they'll often leave a penny change or give us loose change next time), but if you turn up at the counter, toss me the note and announce you don't have the penny, sorry but you still owe a penny and I will wait to complete the transaction until you give me the penny..
We do have leeway if the customer would have to break into a £10 or £20 for that penny, but people who do that tend to be apologetic that they don't have anything smaller, so we don't mind letting them off. And they often will give us some pennies next time as a thank you.

[Kit-Ginevra]

I'm curious about this. I assume this is public transit as you mentioned "stops." How does increasing fare with more stops work for you? I'm genuinely curious. Here a one-way pass is good for three hours on any local bus (we have a few crosstown express ones that have a higher price) and/or within 2 adjacent rail zones. Within those parameters, there's no limit on how many stops you can go. The fare covers one stop down or 20 stops down as long as the service is either local bus or inside the same two train zones.

A system where the fare went up for each stop (if I'm understanding how your system works) would confuse the heck out of me.

Well,if it's anything like our city,there are like fare stages.City centre down to the river is £1,from the river down to the pub on the corner is £1.70,up to the estate is £2.50.You want to save money,you walk to the next stop.

We also have day tickets,week tickets,month tickets-yer pays yer money,the rest of that time period,you just flash your ticket at the driver and hop on.

My nice little card that works about £3 per day lets me travel anywhere in Cornwall,Devon,Somerset and out to Lyme Regis.For work,it's brilliant.Hop on bus,travel an hour to destination A,back to destination B,down to destination C ad nauseam should I need to for just £90 a month.