Smile-breaks
No More Cash for Me
I made the mistake of using cash the other day. You remember cash… Those green bills with the faces on them and all the different sizes of silver coins, with a few copper pennies mixed in. Most of us carry cash, but when it comes time to pay – out comes the plastic.
Because plastic’s easier. No mathematical calculations; no sifting through coins, looking for one more nickel. With plastic, you don’t have to decide whether to pull out a twenty or a ten and a five and - how many ones?
Three. Well, two if you don’t mind reaching in your pocket for a bunch of coins and counting out two quarters, a dime, a nickel and four pennies. But if you don’t use your change, you’re gonna get a bunch more of those coins back and you already have too many.
So carefully you count out the change, but you’re a penny short so you reach for the little tray with all the pennies in it, but there’s no penny tray here, so now what? You put the coins back in your pocket and go for the one dollar bill.
But all you have is two fives. When you take one of those fives out of your pocket, a bunch of nickels and dimes fall out and go splattering onto the floor.
Plastic is better. That’s for sure. But there are limits. When I bought a banana, a small coffee and a candy bar down at 7-11 the other day, the total came to two dollars and eighty-three cents. I was hardly going to charge two dollars and eighty-three cents to my VISA – debit or credit.
I was pretty sure I had enough change to cover the eighty-three cents, so I reached in my pocket and hauled out a handful of coins. I sorted through them and picked out two quarters, two dimes, a nickel and another nickel and three pennies. Eighty-three cents. Exactly.
I tossed the coins onto the counter. The clerk counted them and – strange… He left them there. How come he didn’t scoop them up and put them in the register? He just stood there, looking at me.
Silently I counted the coins on the counter. Two quarters - fifty cents, two dimes and a nickel – seventy five cents (I count in quarters), another nickel - eighty cents, and three pennies, for a grand total of eighty-three cents. Exactly.
I looked at the clerk. He looked at me. Maybe he couldn’t count. I decided to help him.
“It’s all there, right? Eighty-three cents?” I moved the change toward him, one coin at a time. He nodded.
What was he waiting for? People behind me were waiting to pay for their lotto tickets and Slurpees and newspapers and there he was, standing there looking at me. In a sort of expectant way, come to think of it.
Then he moved his head in a questioning way.
Ohmigosh! The dollars! I forgot the two dollars. What a dummy. How embarrassing. Fortunately I had two dollar bills in my wallet. They practically jumped up and flew onto that counter. The clerk scooped up the bills and the change while I grabbed my banana, coffee and candy bar and slunk out of there.
Never would have happened with plastic. The computer would have taken the two dollars and eighty-three cents out of my account and billed me at the end of the month. Automatic debit to my checking account. Absolutely no coins or currency involved.
I’m throwing away all my cash and it’s gonna be plastic from now on. A hundred percent plastic. No more math calculations. No more forgetting to get the dollar bills to go with the change.
Now I just need to find where I wrote down my PIN…