Cash is “king”? More like a peasant, these days
I went to Panera the other day to suck down a bagel with cream cheese and soak up some free Wi-Fi.
My total of my purchase was around four bucks- and I paid with a twenty.
What happened next didn’t surprise me- as it happens nearly every time I present a cashier with a twenty, fifty or hundred dollar bill these days.
Before depositing my bill into the drawer and presenting me my change, the girl took out the counterfeit checker pen and drew a line on the bill- to assure herself of it’s authenticity.
This happens all the time.
It used to be only in the inner-city bodegas and corner stores that the clerks would need to check for counterfeit bills. But now, it’s virtually everywhere.
I’ve had bills checked at the grocery store, the corner store, the car wash, the diner, the bank, the liquor store…seems like the only place that doesn’t check for counterfeits is the bar.
I remember in the late-nineties reading about the prospect of a “cashless society” – a veritable utopia where every transaction would be swift and secure with the advent of the debit card.
“Pish, posh” I thought to myself. Cash will ALWAYS be king.
I also remember the switch from the old twenties to the new twenties- and then to the newer twenties- something about massive amounts of counterfeits rolling through.
Well isn’t it odd, today, that we have all of this new and secure paper currency- but virtually EVERY bill is checked for the fear that it may be a fake?
What happened?
I thought this was for our own good?
A friend of mine recently recounted a horror-story she experienced dealing with PNC Bank. You see, she had invested in a short-term CD which had reached it’s maturity. The amount was just over five thousand dollars. This friend, not unlike myself, prefers to deal in cash as much as possible. So upon receiving the certified bank check from the institution in which she invested the dollars, she deposited the check in her PNC account.
Several days later, she went to her home branch, filled out a withdrawal slip and presented it to the teller- the same teller she deals with nearly every time she goes to the bank. And this is where the fun began.
The teller asked to excuse herself for a moment- to confer with her manager- and came back to inform my friend that she’d have to wait “a few more days” to withdraw her cash.
She left the bank- frustrated, but patient.
She returned several days later, only to be told the same thing.
Long story short, it took her five trips to the bank and multiple phone calls to withdraw her hard earned, certified cash.
In the end, the reason given to her was “Well, it’s far above our average cash withdrawal. We needed to make sure you were who you said you were”.
I lived in Toronto from late 98 until mid 01- and every time I’d come home to visit, I always looked forward to getting those fat greenbacks in exchange for those puny Canadian coins.
The exchange rate was around 1.47 during the majority of the time I lived there. Meaning, for every US dollar I exchanged, I’d get one dollar and forty seven cents Canadian. And on the reverse, it was about sixty five cents for every Canadian dollar I wished to exchange to US currency.
Today, however, is a much different climate- a mere seven years later and the US dollar is worth LESS than a Canadian Loonie. One US dollar gets you about ninety-seven cents in the land of our neighbor to the north.
So what’s going on?
Our dollar is worth less and less with each passing day.
Our government continues to show signs that they simply cannot be trusted.
And girl at the Panera is convinced that Jersey Mike wants to pass her a fake twenty.
Can anybody break a fifty?
this is the first article in like a week ive actualy wanted to sit and read the hole thing
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Those pens that they mark the bills with are dangerous. A few years ago, when I lived down South, I knew the owners of a small convenience store. They used one of those pens. One of their local customers came in and paid with a US $20. The pen indicated the bill was no good, but the convenience store owners took the twenty and then called the local sheriff. The sheriff did no investigation, but went to the guys house, and handcuffed and arrested this poor guy. Turns out that the bill was a “1950 series” twenty, completely legitimate, that the guy had saved for a rainy day. But those pens aren’t set up to deal with old money.
In short, this guy was arrested, booked and fingerprinted for using legitimate US currency to make a convenience store purchase.
And once the Secret Service straightened out the local sheriff’s deputy, no apologies were ever given. The charges were just quietly dropped.
And so it goes.
It must be a PA thing, cause I drop ‘larger’ bills often here in Md, and I have NEVER been inked.
That sounds crazy, it must be a prevalent problem up north.
I spent almost a decade in retail / sales management. We *never* relied on those pens, largely because they’re too easy to fake out (and as Grandpa Moses said, they can throw the occasional false positive). A cursory glance for the watermark (president’s face on right-hand side of the front), embedded strip on the left, and on the newer bills, the green-to-black color shift as you tilt it. If you observe all that and it’s still a fake, they’ve earned whatever it is they’re trying to buy.
But back to the original point, I think it’s mostly a case of some cashier making $6 / hour not giving a damn whether or not Joe Customer is upset, and just following store policy to keep her job.
Dude,
Nice layout on the blog. And as a retail maven, I have to agree with Floor9. Some part-timer not knowing what they hell they are doing. Unfortunately, it happens all the time.
Namaste.
Try a $100 once. I sold an old car and was paid cash by my uncle. I have to pick and choose where I can break them. So far Best Buy, McDonald’s will. Other stores if it is after 5 won’t touch them. I had a Dunkin Donuts actually give me a dollar off my meal rather than break the $100 cause that was the remaining of small bills in my wallet.