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Have you ever been caught without a penny?

MACDRIVE

MACDRIVE

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Feb 17, 2006
1,695
3
Clovis, California
I was in Target this evening buying some groceries. When I went to the checkout counter to pay for my stuff, the total came to $37.01

I gave the girl two twenty dollar bills while hoping that she would overlook my discrepancy of being a penny short. She didn't! She proceeded to give me two dollars and 99 cents change!

I wasn't angry with her; I know she was just doing her job, but I was still hoping for the full three dollars back. I was angry with myself mainly for not having that damn penny in my pocket. :mad:
 
Lately in Mexico we have what we call "round up".

For example: If you have to pay $95.50 they give you the option to donate that $.50 to charity.

$.50 mexican pesos are equivalent to $.05 dollars.
 
When that happens I look around the drawers for a penny, if I can't find one then I have to give the customer .99 back. Otherwise the registers would be short at the end of the night and that wouldn't be good. So yeah it stinks.
 
Here it gets rounded either up or down because we dont have pennies. Smallest currency is 5c
 
viccles said:
Here it gets rounded either up or down because we dont have pennies. Smallest currency is 5c
Click to expand...

I wish we did that, I hate pennies.


When I worked at Target, we usually had extra change by the registers. When someone's change was something like XX.01 and they would tell us to keep the penny or whatever remaining change there was, we'd set it aside so when people like you who came in and got that total and were stuck without a penny, we'd use that.

TBH though, Target doesn't even count the drawers. At least when I worked there, they didn't. When we closed a register, we turned the cash in to be put in the safe and left the change in the till. And if we needed, say a roll of pennies, the manager would bring over a roll or 2 without taking the 50 cents or dollar to keep everything even, so there was no way they could balance it. So sometimes, even if I didn't have that extra change on hand, I would just give people the whole dollar rather than the 99 cents since no one would know
 
Foxglove9 said:
When that happens I look around the drawers for a penny, if I can't find one then I have to give the customer .99 back. Otherwise the registers would be short at the end of the night and that wouldn't be good. So yeah it stinks.
Click to expand...

Doesn't it more or less balance out if you have people that tell you to keep the penny for their change?
 
This used to happen to we all the time, back when I ate drive-thru more often. The worst part was always knowing that there were tons of pennies sitting in your car's ash tray.

Now I use my credit card for just about everything though.
 
I also use my card almost all the time but was caught short last night when the bank strangely reset my PIN. I called them up and thankfully it was during business hours so it got fixed after a few hours, but it was pretty annoying at the time, not to mention slightly embarrassing.
 
I have to get out of the habit of giving the cashier bills and keeping the change. Then I end up with a heavy bag of change.

Which reminds me...time to take the bucket of change down to the Coinstar machine and get an Amazon or Starbucks card. (they don't charge for those, I think)
 
God I hate pennies.

Add me to the list who would like to see the penny eliminated.

It's just stupid.

hana said:
Which reminds me...time to take the bucket of change down to the Coinstar machine and get an Amazon or Starbucks card. (they don't charge for those, I think)
Click to expand...
At mine we can get iTunes credits. ;) :D
 
I never carry change with me, ever, unless I've just paid for something with cash (say at a restaurant), and even then I usually don't have a penny. Debit/credit cards FTW.
 
I think every country should just get rid of them. Here in the UK, 6 billion pennies (£65million) are thought to be lost, and out of circulation, and for some stupid reason, the Royal Mint are designing a new one. Hopefully the last one.
 
eluk said:
Shops bring these problems on themselves by pricing most items at £x.99 to make them appear cheaper.
Click to expand...

The price of the items make no difference in terms of pennies. When you add sales tax or VAT or whatever, you will end up with pennies involved.
 
rdowns said:
The price of the items make no difference in terms of pennies. When you add sales tax or VAT or whatever, you will end up with pennies involved.
Click to expand...

in most countries sales tax/vat/further fees have to be included on the sticker price in retail

so if you see something for 99 cents on the shelf here it is going to cost 99 cents
 
How ridiculous is this thread, really? You're complaining about how you got your change back (it's cash, for goodness sakes... it's already inconvenient!)? Or that Target doesn't give you a penny?

If Target gave you a penny with every product ending in .99, they'd lose hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in revenue, even being conservative. Frankly, I think that money could go toward higher-paid employees or actually USABLE health benefits for them.

There was a statistic figured by a large anti-Walmart organization that found if Wal-Mart added ONE PERCENT to every item sold in every store in the country, they could pay EACH worker (money or benefits) full healthcare for free, or upwards of $15.00 per hour (Costco style).
 
Recently I was at a restaurant ... and I had like .85 cents ... and the bill came to .86. I asked the cashier if she had a penny laying around. She reached in the group tip jar and grabbed a penny out of it. I was really impressed with that ... and took a dollar and put it in the tip jar.

it was my way of saying thanks at a place I wouldn't usually tip at ... and just to encourage her to do that for somebody else someday ...
 
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