You know you are getting old when:

[belfastboy]

I have become my grandfather, left behind by modern technology. We needed a few groceries, nothing much, so I drove to the convenience store ten minutes away. The self service tills baffle me so I join the small queue. One customer pays with a card on the tap and go system, the next two pay by zapping their phones at the reader, I once saw a fellow do something similar with his watch. My turn to pay I hand over a twenty pound note and get the most patronising look. Such is life.
I don't even know what an "App" is, other than it's some sort of program and App is an abbreviation of Application. (Clear as mud.)

I was at a gathering on Friday night with a group of folks around my age. The discussion turned towards our businesses. The talk centered around tech with some using 3D printing, others talked of how they are incorporating AI to expand and reach new audiences. I talked about getting a new steam iron!!! Felt very old.

 

[Woodtroll]

I’ve been handed back in change more than I was due on a few occasions. I’m not poor, and I like to think I’m reasonably honest, so I correct such errors and hand back the overage. I wouldn’t wish for the cashier’s till to come up short. His or her day is likely difficult enough without that additional problem.

I absolutely agree. And you have to count it to know.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Many if not most modern point-of-sale register terminals require users to enter cash transactions using a "Cash Tender" button set up in round sum increments of $1, $5, $10, and $20. Any other amount paid over requires the use of a Manual Tender button that requires the exact amount paid over to be entered in by hand, and that then calculates the change due. This takes more time to do than simply taking a $20 and entering it that way. It slows the transaction, and thus slows the line -- it does not in any way make the transaction easier for the person ringing up the sale, and clerks pretty much universally do not want you to do this.

The other issue is that in some systems, especially in stores processing a large number of transactions, Manual Tender transactions get flagged in the terminal sales log -- I know ours does -- and some organizations might require this to be double-checked by the manager or whoever processes the daily report to be sure there aren't any irregularities. Some organizations will have a flat-out rule against accepting this kind of tender -- if you give the clerk $20.37 or whatever, they're required to hand your change back and just enter the $20 and give you the change from that. This is a precaution against bill-and-coin-counting swindles, and a way of keeping these kinds of time-wasting oddities off the sales log.

Basically, when someone does this at a register, they're not doing anybody any favor but themselves. It has nothing to do with kids being confused and everything to do with saving time for everyone else. Those who insist on doing this should really consider getting out of the habit.

Next on Pissed Off Cashiers Forum: Stop making petty purchases with $100 bills, especially on the weekend -- the bank's closed, we don't have unlimited change in the safe, and you're not impressing your date.

 

[tonyb]

I have yet to encounter such a system.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Go to work in a supermarket, a chain restaurant, or a theatre -- any kind of fast-moving retail environment that depends on rapid churn.

The one we use, "Ready Theatre Systems," is used in thousands of theatres across the country, and manual tender works the same way in all of them. If you hand the kid an odd amount, you'll see their eyes flick down to the manual tender button, and it'll bring up a touchpad on the screen, and they'll have to type in the amount you gave them, and then key in Enter, and then the transaction will ring up and you'll get your change. At least six extra keystrokes where only one would be easier and faster. That adds up fast when you've got a long line.

(And I won't even get into how long it takes when a customer plays coy about their age and then gets sore when they don't get the senior discount, and we have to void the first sale, confirm the void, print out the void, reenter the sale at the lower price, take the tender, and give the new ticket. No, we can't, and won't, just take the buck out of the till and call it good.)

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Interesting discussion. I side with GHT. At Starbucks or Mickydees I give paper and pence or swipe a card kept
wallet for petty charge. Theatre tickets, restaurants and what more dear another separate card to flash and go.
I cannot do self same nor have grip on the cell phone electric beam me up Mr Scott act.
Charge card and simple currency note works fine for me.

 

[tonyb]

So what am I to do with all this loose change if I’m not to spend it like, you know, money?

I could take jars of it to the bank, which would be a PITA for both me and the poor underpaid teller. Or I could do what I see some of our less fortunate brothers and sisters do and dump it into a Coinstar machine at King Soopers and lose whatever percentage it takes.

Like self-checkout, this is all for the convenience of the business, and not its customers. They would rather we not use cash at all. (FWIW, I do make most of my purchases with a debit card. But I carry cash to leave tips and to split bills when I go out with my cheapskate friends and when I’d rather not leave a record of a purchase or when I lack absolute confidence in what might be done with the information on my card.)

So no, I will not get out of the habit of paying exact amounts or handing over $20.27 on an $8.27 purchase so that I get only folding money back and not another 73 cents to put in a jar at home.

 

[Woodtroll]

A whole "six extra keystrokes" to a teen/twenty/thirty something that can type two paragraphs a second using only two thumbs on their phone? Come on.

Wait until we move to a completely cashless system, then "The Boys" that are always lurking in the shadows around here somewhere will be stealing and manipulating all our purchase information. I remember discussions about that here, too.

You can't have it both ways.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
Yeah, no s**t.

Like fees for cashing checks, this hits the people who can least afford the loss.

 

[belfastboy]

I have yet to encounter such a system.

Yes, we don't use cash much these days but back preCovid it was standard practice we would do it all the time and cashiers would generally thank us.

 

[GHT]

Wait until we move to a completely cashless system, then "The Boys" that are always lurking in the shadows around here somewhere will be stealing and manipulating all our purchase information. I remember discussions about that here, too.

That's known as profiling. George Orwell really was well ahead of his time when he wrote the book 1984.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I save my loose change in a quart-size soda cup, and when the cup gets full, I toss it in the coin machine at the bank. No charge, no problems, no fuss. Just that easy. It takes about three months to fill up and at the end of it I get back maybe thirty or forty dollars for a tank of gas. Plus it kicks out any silver coins I might have missed so that's a nice convenience. I'd rather make life marginally easier for an underpaid cashier than think I was being inconvenienced by having a few pieces of loose change to toss in the cup at night.

Whatever.

 

[tonyb]

It ain’t free here.

 

[Edward]

You know you're old when you suddenly realise your go-to pop culture reference for being old is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and your undergraduates look blank when you ask if they've seen it because it was in the cinema thirteen years before any of them were born.

Now I feel even older, because I'm wondering if I've posted this before...

 

[tonyb]

I was a taxicab driver starting at age 18. Back then it was almost entirely a cash business (although the occasional professional offered to take it out in trade).

From time to time, maybe a couple-three times a year, I was paid with old currency and coins. I was left feeling torn on those occasions, seeing how it was a minor boon to be receiving payment in coins likely worth more than face value, but I wasn’t so naive as not to realize that the money was either stolen or that the customer was so desperate for immediate transportation that s/he raided the coin collection.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

You know you're old when you suddenly realise your go-to pop culture reference for being old is Indian Jones and the Last Crusade, and your undergraduates look blank when you ask if they've seen it because it was in the cinema thirteen years before any of them were born.

Now I feel even older, because I'm wondering if I've posted this before...

I occasionally enter adolescent discussion at public place and moment to habitually pitch the swashbuckler's film canon. Its gotten to evangelizing with me but as with the Bard and Branagh, Indiana Jones dovetails Hamlet and Henry v.

 

[LizzieMaine]

One thing bank-tellers really hate are the silverbugs who come in and buy a tray of half-dollars -- which usually have to be special ordered -- and take them home to pick out any silver, and then rewrap them and bring them back. In my town the banks have a blacklist of local irritants -- ah -- customers who do this, and pretty soon they find that they've worn out their welcome at all the local branches. The local managers will tell them to take their business elsewhere, and there you go.

Source: friend who's a bank teller who's sick of Johnny J. Neckbeard putting her thru a lot of extra work just so he can get a couple of '64 JFKs.

 

[Woodtroll]

One thing bank-tellers really hate are the silverbugs who come in and buy a tray of half-dollars -- which usually have to be special ordered -- and take them home to pick out any silver, and then rewrap them and bring them back. In my town the banks have a blacklist of local irritants -- ah -- customers who do this, and pretty soon they find that they've worn out their welcome at all the local branches. The local managers will tell them to take their business elsewhere, and there you go.

Source: friend who's a bank teller who's sick of Johnny J. Neckbeard putting her thru a lot of extra work just so he can get a couple of '64 JFKs.

That would be aggravating, for sure. I'm surprised there's still enough old coins mixed in to make these shenanigans worthwhile. But some folks have nothing better to do, I guess.

 

[tonyb]

As to knowing you’re getting old …

You remember steel pennies and winged liberty dimes and Indian head nickels still in circulation.

 

[tonyb]

And …

I doubt most people under age 50 or so know there was ever such a thing as a steel penny or a winged liberty dime. They’re likely familiar with Indian head nickels, though, seeing how the design still shows up with regularity in commercial signage, often in “Western” themed businesses, what with the buffalo on the reverse.