On Money…

Gen and I ran to our local super-chain supermarket (Kroger) to pick up a few random essentials like apples, bananas, parmesan cheese, rolos and chocolate syrup- you know, just normal stuff… Waiting in line, the manager decides to assist and open a second checkout line. Lucky us!

I pay in cash, for my essentials. (in all fairness, the rolos were Gen’s.)

I receive $3.37 change. It’s by a complete fluke that I glance at the change and see a Canadian quarter in place of a good old-fashioned (and accepted at all stores domestically) quarter. “um, excuse me?” I say, politely.

She responds with a look.

“This isn’t accepted here, correct?” I mean, maybe I’m stupid… Maybe Canadian money is now the same as US currency. I don’t know.

“No, it isn’t.”

“Right, so can I get a quarter that is accepted here please?”

She looks at me as though I have asked her to not only hand over her newborn child but her sweet little pure-bread puppy as well. (assuming, of course that she has both.) “We don’t do that here.”

It is important, at this point, for me to point out that my hand has NOT moved, from where she handed me the change. I have not attempted to pull one over on her, with my quick handedness in and effort to cheat her out of an American 25 cent piece.

“um, here’s the thing. You GAVE me a quarter that you have admitted you can’t accept, and now you are refusing to exchange it for valid American currency. Do YOU see the problem with that?”

“It’s just a quarter, ma’am.” Oh, I wanted to Just a quarter her quarter… but what was I going to do? Ask for the manager? So I just stood there. Eventually her stubborn streak (not mine, I was the victim, of course) weakened and she said “I will make an exception just this once.”

So, for the record, so that we are all clear- And this comes STRAIGHT FROM MANAGEMENT- Kroger’s policy, should they give you unaccepted money is to not replace it with real money with value. To some people this might seem a bit underhanded but I guess it’s simply in store policy.

We keep a large jar full of change. Every year or so we roll it up (usually when it’s too heavy) and deposit in the bank. The last time it was done (and it was ALL American money, mind you) was right before we moved here, last March. I decided it would an interesting idea to go through the jar and see what we come up with. Well, we had eleven Canadian pieces, twelve British coins, 4 completely unknown coins that Gen immediately thought were “awesome” and two plastic pennies. No, I’m not kidding… PLASTIC pennies.

The moral of this story is, Michigan cashiers need to pay more attention to the money they accept and give as change. (as do we need to pay more attention to what we’re shoving in our pockets/coin purses/change jars.)