Change: Nobody Wants It, A Cashiers Perspective

That is the truth. Most people who put money in donation jars near the checkout are not picking out their cents, they are dumping the whole handful of change from the transaction.

I should have added that I have noticed this in big box stores and supermarkets, where the lines are typically more than annoying and I have plenty of time to observe.

I have not noticed this in smaller shops, probably because there are no real lines or there is at most only one person in front of me and they are done before I can open my wallet or unlock my phone.

With the new chip cards, paying with a card isn't any faster than cash now.... especially since many people don't know which merchants have a chip reader and which ones you just swipe so there is the confusion and having to redo the swipe/chip read, etc....

I think when you pay with exact change, the cashier has to count it is part of the rub. Sometimes, they just throw it into the drawer because if there is a line behind you, Lord forbid someone actually takes the 4 seconds to count the money. In reality, there is also the eye rolling from the cashier to deal with.

Agreed, if they dropped the cent the charities doing "nickel" drives would probably find that they received even more money.

Lately I've been paying with cards more for the cashback bonuses, but I do miss paying with cash and change. I try to use exact change where possible, and never have more than a dollar in change at a time. I think it's fun to figure out the best way to spend coins to get the fewest of them back, or to see how many nickels I can accumulate before spending them naturally (record is 6), or seeing which coins I've had the longest. Yep, I'm a total geek. I also spend my walks to work thinking about trigonometry...

Here, it's the other way round.
For example, the total to pay in a supermarket is 32.84 - the cashier will often ask "do you have 2.84? .84? Or .04?" Consequently, the stores whose cashiers actively try to relieve you from the burden of carrying too many low-value coins are those where you can go to if you actually need a larger bill changed.

Then, there is the other type, the stores which constantly say "we don't have the 0.01 change, we'll be owing you that". Obviously, nobody actually returns that, but I've never heard anyone voicing their complaint about not getting a quarter of a cent in change.

At smaller stores and vendors the situation varies greatly - from those that demand exact change down to the quarter of a cent, through those that will take as much as you've got in change - as long as you're not too far off the total, to those that will tell you to stop and give them nothing smaller than 0.10 (2 cents) when they see you're counting off the yellow stuff [just as in Russia, the lowest values are yellow-colored here].


As for cards, sometimes it is quicker but there are all those times when it turns out there are no funds on the card. Or the card is rejected - I've seen up to three cards rejected in a row. Then, the waiting time for the printout after a card payment to be ready is sometimes longer than it'd take the cashier to put the coins in the cash register. The customer asking whether they should enter the pin number or will the cashier use the payment method that doesn't require it, etc.

A couple of months ago, I placed a single penny on a rail on my front porch, right next to the trash cans that homeless/scavengers go through every week. Can't miss it. It's only one cent, but even the destitute don't want it.

I should try a nickel and see how long it lasts.

As a cashier I don't have a problem with that. But after I hit that cash tender button and the cash drawer opens then that is it. Some customers try and give you change after that process. Some don't mind it and some do. I prefer not to do that personally. I have seen a lot of young cashiers do this and often their drawers end up short. Just best for them to give the change the register says. But I really don't see why some customers are so picky about what form their change takes. It all spends the same anyways. Just my Two Cents...no pun intended!