Picture this scene: you’ve just purchased a donut and a cup of coffee. You just hit the ATM, so you hand the clerk a twenty, pick up your joe and take a sip. The clerk presses the magic buttons on her register, and the till pops open; she puts your twenty in there and pulls out a ten, a five, three ones, a quarter, and a dime, totaling $18.35. You hold out your hand, and she puts the bills in it and sits the coins on top. You try to put the coins and cash in your pocket, but because she put the coins ATOP the cash, the quarter falls off and rolls under the table of a group of rowdy teenagers who laugh at you and say things like “Loser!” and “Vagrant!”
All of this could have been avoided. And not just by avoiding Dunkin’ Donuts, because that would be ridiculous; as we can all agree, donuts are delicious, and a hot cuppa ain’t bad neither. No, it could have been avoided if the clerk had simply put the coins in your hand FIRST, and then place the bills on top. The coins, being smaller, are easier to grasp with your palm flesh while you fold the bills up into your pocket. But no clerk does this. Seriously. NONE. EVER.
Why is this? I don’t know. I know when I worked at Dunkin’ Donuts, I did the same damn thing. Nobody told me to; it just seemed natural. It was as if God had designed my brain to do a thing that trebled the likelihood that the customer would be taunted by delinquents. Why, God, WHY?
Here is what I propose: let’s have an International Give Me The Coins First Please Day. We’ll print up shirts and bumper stickers! It’ll be great! And we’ll make the world a much better place for people who have a pathological fear of teenagers.
Along these lines, though this is just getting allllll exxxxxxxxtreeeeeeme: As a PWB (person with breasts), I am also a PWP (person with purse). At the checkout counter at say, Happy Harry’s, they give me my bag o’ goods which I pick up, and then they give me the bills and coins which I pick up with the other hand. Now I have to either hold up the entire line by standing at the counter to put the dollars and coins into said purse (or worse, in my wallet in said purse), or I run the risk of dropping everything in my mittz as I stand near the door and try to juggle all of this stuff. I hate it.
They should have a table or a chair or a midget or something available so I can put all my crap away before then trying to find my keys.
But that’s an entry for a different day.
Here-freakin’-here!
I have decided that I just have to stop, separate the bills and coins in to two hands-worth, and put them away. The people in line behind me will just have to wait.
Sometimes, I am fast enough to which the bills back and out of the way before the coins come down, but not often enough.
When I worked at Shields, I ALWAYS put the coins in people’s hands first, namely because of how much it pissed me off when everyone else in the known world puts the coins on top.
need one for the windows too – like a flag held up by the window being rolled up…. for all the drive-thru kiddies…