Summer is over, fall has arrived, and not it's time for a quick look back on some money matters that hit the wrong buttons. What am I talking about? I'm talking about people doing strange, incomprehensible things with their cash. In this case, I'm focusing on retail, because that's where I have my experience with the phenomenon. I'm not talking about how they're making odd purchases, but that they're making purchases oddly. For example...
People who ask a cashier to break a hundred dollar bill either right after the store opens or right before it closes. Seriously, people do that. Why? Because they're unwilling or unable to go to a bank? Perhaps. Or perhaps it's just a case of convenience. They're already at the store; why not? What these people fail to consider is whether or not a store actually has enough smaller bills on hand to do that. When a store first opens, typically they have whatever the default starting amount is for a register. For most that's somewhere in the realm of two hundred dollars. But it's in ones, fives and tens, as well as rolled and loose coins. Very few stores will stock a till with more than that to start, because they expect customers throughout the day will fill the register up with smaller bills after making smaller purchases. If a cashier gets two people in a row buying less than ten dollars in merchandise and paying with hundred dollar bills, they've just wiped out that register's ability to make change for any other customer. One time, when I was working a register because of a call-out, I had to tell a guy I couldn't break his hundred dollar bill. I simply didn't have enough in the register to do so. Needless to say, that didn't go over very well.
Another example would be what is commonly referred to as sweaty money. This is cash tucked into a sock, or into someone's undergarments, in order to hide it. Cashiers absolutely hate handling money pulled out of a bra, a sock, a shoe, or the inside of a waistband. It's always damp, it's always gross, and it's always a health hazard. Would you want a cashier to hand you someone else's sweat-covered cash as your change? No, of course you wouldn't. I've had people throw a fit because the cash I handed them as change was dirty. I work in a hardware store! I come home every day smelling like a lumber yard! You really expect the money to be perfectly clean, crisp bills? No!
Finally, we have the strangest example of strange money, and this actually comes from banks rather than from customers. When a store orders change from a bank, it typically comes in the form of bundled bills. Ones in bundles of a hundred, fives in bundles of five hundred, and so on and so forth. The quality content of those bundles, however, differs from day to day. Sometimes a bundle will have the rattiest, filthiest, grossest bills you can imagine. Sometimes it'll have the newest, freshest, just-cut bills bundled together so tightly you have to spend hours separating them out. Most of the time it's somewhere in between. Those two extremes, though, happen enough to warrant consideration. After all, if you're building a delivery for a retail store, what makes you think either of those options will work out?
In the end, it comes down to the fact that people just do strange things with cash.