Exact Change and Announcing Money

[Enigma]

I'm the same. I give exact change if I can come up with it in a few seconds, I don't waste my time holding up the line though. And I also say how much I'm handing over, its a safe guard. Yesterday when I paid for my dinner the cashier rolled her eyes and said "I can see that". To which I replied in an equally snotty voice " forgive me for double checking the amount, oh wait, it wasn't just for you"

I know, immature. But it felt so good.

[MadMike]

I'm OK with exact change as long as it's quick. If it's going to take them awhile to dig up the 70 or 80 cents or whatever, I'd rather just make change and be done with it.

I don't know if this bugs the rest of you, but the one thing I cannot stand more than anything is if a person hands over a bill, say a 10, waits for the cashier to open the till, then announce, "Oh wait I think I have 16 cents" or whatever.

That always bothered me as well. It's not like it's that difficult to figure it out in my head, but still, I just wanted to scream, "Why the hell didn't you tell me BEFORE I opened the drawer???"

[marasbaras]

I once spent all of ten seconds digging for exact change ... the cashier was already rolling her eyes and tapping her foot. So, we spent all of five minutes waiting for her manager to come over.

Cashiers and wait-staff need to remember that they are not doing the customers a favor just by their mere presence. If a paying customer wants to spend a few extra seconds due to one of their little quirks, the employee needs to let them ... and do so politely.

[Chromatix]

I had an interesting one the other day. I bought a USB analogue modem, but then returned it because it wouldn't work with Linux (it turned out to be a Lucent "losemodem") despite the steep price. I'd bought it with my debit card, but the store could only use cash for the return. So the service desk gave me a note to take to the cashier, saying the equivalent of "please pay the bearer €39.90".

You can see where this is going. The cashier isn't going to be hugely happy about finding 90 cents - although in Euro-land it's only three coins (50 and two 20s), instead of the five in Yankee-land (three quarters, dime and nickel) - and even less happy about making 39 Euros (€20, €10, €5 notes, then two €2 coins).

So I figured I should make reverse change.

So I handed over the note, and said "I think I've got the ten cents," allowing the cashier to find two €20 notes. In fact, I found a 20-cent piece more easily - my wallet isn't designed for finding coins - so I got €40.10 back. Much neater than if the cashier had needed to find the exact amount.

I can be an awkward customer sometimes, but I definitely try not to be sucky!

[ShinyGreenApple]

I look at it this way.

I showed up for work, and I am there for that eight hour shift, regardless of what my customers do, right? I've found it's easier just to take the change diggers in stride rather than getting bent out of shape about it. I figure it's not going to make my day any longer, as I'm getting paid for my time, and not by customer. If someone apologized for taking a long time with their transaction, I'd always just say "Hey, it doesn't bother me, but I can't speak for the people in line behind you." Of course, I couldn't use this line with just anyone, and I try to feel out people before I speak with them. But most of the time, it got a smile at the very least.

I also like the exact change kind of people when I'm running low on coins and the CSMs are busy so I don't deplete what little bit I have left.

On the other hand, yes, if someone is taking eons to find a penny on a Saturday afternoon when all the registers have lines five people deep or more, yeah, I think that's sucky and it will add to my stress levels because people tend to blame the cashier.

When I'm out, I'll roughly calculate what I think my stuff should come to, and then have a handful of change at the ready. If I get flustered or can't find exact coins, I'll just give them bills or larger coins and be done with it, because I'm paranoid like that. Also, I often feel that the person behind me will invade my personal space or run me down with their cart if I don't 'omghurryup!!!1eleventyone!!1!'

If I really want to fart around with change, I'll head to a self-check.

[powerboy]

As someone who used to cashier in VERY busy stores I both like and dislike exact change.
I like it if you have it ready (meaning you at least have change in your hand or your wallet at the ready and don't have to go digging for it) but I HAAAAAATE it when people will hold up a damn line just to find that extra seven cents.
If your change is not in your hand or in your wallet/change purse that is in your hand then I DON'T want it.

You would hate me. I hand over the bills first and all the while I let them know that I might have the exact change. I might take me about 5-6 seconds too dig for change.

Call me anal retentaive, but I actually count my bills out to the cashier before handing it over to them. But then I've also been given waaaaay too much change back on several occasions too. I also face my bills (both before I hand them over and in my till at work).

I don't mind getting exact or not exact change. To be honest, I'll take any change

These days though, I mostly use my credit card.

I do the same.

[Dips]

It would take the cashier just as long to count the change out to me as it took me to count out exact change to give to him or her. So I'm NOT wasting ANY time by doing it.

[EricKei]

I don't got time for that, I gotta get the money in the drawer and get to the next customer(speed is stressed at my store). if there is no next customer I still have to get it shut because my iph includes the time the drawer's open

A game store I used to work at actually had a little alarm go off if you didn't shut the drawer in a certain amount of time. Not loud, just annoying. Its primary function was that it also sent a notice to Corporate/LP right away, on the assumption that we were stealing from the til...

Back on topic -- I'm an exact change kind of guy, but I normally only do it if there's not too many people behind me.

There IS one situation where it can ba bad to do this, though...When you are in a situation where tips are called for (please, no tip rants ). I used to work at a pizza place. We had one very regular customer, a little old lady whose normal practice was to order a small cheese pizza about 3 days a week, in the morning. 9 times out of 10, it was with the normal day-shift driver. She always either paid in exact change ($6.11 or something like that) or required that we bring her exact change. This is a sneaky way of saying "no, you are not getting a tip". This is also why pizza drivers generally do not carry coin change (besides the sheer bulk).

The main problem with this one was, she lived at the very edge of our delivery area, which means that it actually *cost the driver money* to take her food to her, even accounting for the small comission he got (4%). One day, he got this evil grin in his eye, and he visited upon her the best "sending a message" activities I'd ever seen -- he took her order, and gave her her exact change in the form of a little baggie full of pennies.