"I WANT MY TWO CENTS! YOU'RE STEALING MY TWO CENTS!!!!!!"

[Pixilated]

This is a 'hearing' rather than a 'sighting' since I got the story from a supermarket cashier.

Canada has pretty much phased out the penny. (So I guess that means penny candy is officially dead. ) In my store AFAIK we haven't had a single problem with people using cash -- I certainly haven't.

However, of course not everybody is as lucky. On the first day of the penny's official disappearance, somebody bought a few items at Big Green Supermarket and paid cash. Her change would've been X dollars and, say, 42 cents, so the cashier handed her X dollars and 40 cents.

And the woman lost it.

"WHERE'S MY TWO CENTS?!?"

Cashier tried to explain, but of course the woman was having none of it.

"I WANT MY TWO CENTS! YOU'RE STEALING MY TWO CENTS!!! ARGLABLARGLAARGL!!!""

She even dragged the cashier who told me the story into the fray.

"YOU'VE BEEN HERE A LONG TIME; IS THIS RIGHT? SHE WON'T GIVE ME MY TWO CENTS!!"

Second cashier tried to explain but with little better success.

The woman eventually stomped out. Of course, she didn't get her two cents but she did manage to reduce the one cashier to tears, so I suppose her day wasn't completely wasted.

[Aethian]

Isn't there a spot on your tax forms where if you keep track of how much you've lost you can take it off your taxes? Or was that something I heard in a gov/civ class?

[Teskeria]

Isn't there a spot on your tax forms where if you keep track of how much you've lost you can take it off your taxes? Or was that something I heard in a gov/civ class?

bet that wont last long. to many people will try to claim they lost hundreds (or thousands) of dollars. they will have to make it mandatory to have your receipts to claim.

[Aethian]

Maybe I saw it on a customs form...?

[Kagato]

Um, if there's a spot on our tax forms then I haven't seen it or heard about it. But, that being said, it may be something that comes out on the the next round of tax forms. In the end it will all even out and most people will start using debit/credit over cash. Not only that, but many places will change their pricing so everything will come out to an even .00 or .05 amount - or at least that is the talk among many local merchants where I am.

What it will most likely equal in terms of tax returns is a little bit more added onto GST cheques for those who are lucky enough to receive them.

Hah, not likely, they phased out 1 and 2 cent coins in New Zealand LONG ago, then proceeded to phase out 5 cent coins less than a decade ago, you still find things all over the place for $3.99 or $5.74 or some arbitrary amount due to the fact that tax needs to be added on to whatever the base retail price is.

Most places in NZ use what is known as "Swedish rounding", meaning if something ends in 1,2,3,4 or 5 then it is rounded down to the nearest 10c, while if something ends in 6,7,8 or 9 then it is rounded up. EFTPOS, credit card and cheque transactions are all done at face value with no rounding.

[Freak]

Dude, I can never even get around to using 5c coins. Who on earth could ever get around to using pennies?

[BowserKoopa1]

The woman eventually stomped out. Of course, she didn't get her two cents but she did manage to reduce the one cashier to tears, so I suppose her day wasn't completely wasted.

Actually the woman did get her in, with her little rant

[Chromatix]

Technically, Swedish rounding works with 5-cent coins being the lowest denomination, since then there is no ambiguity at the half-way point. So 8, 9, 1, 2 all round to 0, and 3, 4, 6, 7 all round to 5. The idea is that it averages out in the long run, even if everyone pays cash all the time - of course it is possible to manipulate it, but the time cost of working out how to do so reliably would be more than it was worth.

Finland and several other European countries use that system, with only a few Eurozone countries still using the 1 and 2 cent coins. I assume that Canada had no 2-cent coin in the first place...

[Jetfire]

Right, we only had 1, 5, 10, 25, 50 (rare) 1$, and 2$ coins. Now the penny (1cent) is gone, so we're doing that rounding.

8,9,0,1,and 2 round to 0.
3,4,5,6 and 7 round to 5.

Stores are encouraged to do that rounding for cash transactions.
Other stores are just eating the loss and always rounding down regardless. (Superstore and Home Depot are the two I've heard).
Some are rounding all transactions period, not just cash transactions, and may round them down or as outlined above.

Overall I haven't noticed any issues with it, but I almost always use Debit anyway, so I rarely have cash to get pennys back with.

One thing I'm curious about, since cash sales are rounded now, that makes it almost impossible to perfectly balance tills at the end of the day, doesn't it?

[PepperElf]

What a JERK!!!

I mean sure it might suck, but it's NOT something the cashier can fix. The nasty female needs to address this to her local government, not thrash the cashier who has no say or ability to change this.



I HATE when cashiers or other employees get turned into punching-bags for something that the city, county, or state/territory, or country decided on.

[Merriweather]

"I want my TWO DOLLARS"......

All I can see is SC coming after the cashier on skis......

[PepperElf]

"I want my TWO DOLLARS"......

All I can see is SC coming after the cashier on skis......

I just looked up the image and realized... he's on a bike AND skis!

[Pixilated]

*snip*

One thing I'm curious about, since cash sales are rounded now, that makes it almost impossible to perfectly balance tills at the end of the day, doesn't it?

I've wondered about that myself -- I'll ask next time I go in to work.

[Chromatix]

Here in Finland the register does the rounding automatically. So it knows the correct amount of cash that should be found in the till. It remembers the exact total as well, for use in card transactions, but the customer is first shown the rounded total on assumption of a cash transaction.

[Ironclad Alibi]

"I want my TWO DOLLARS"......

"I need about tree fiddy."