Ink Pen by Phil Dunlap for February 03, 2022

Yeah, we’ll just have to cash it in…

Like Ralston I never liked getting bills and coins in the same handful. Whenever I made change I handed over the bills first so a customer could put them away, and then handed over the coins… Some seemed to appreciate it. Others just kept their hands with the bills stuck out until the coins went on top and stuffed everything together in a pocket.

I carry a 20 and a 10 and a 5 and 6 credit cards. The times I have to use cash are few and getting farther apart.

Cash is just about dead at this point, another victim of COVID. I don’t think I’ve paid cash for anything in at least two years.

I “tapped” to purchase today for the first time…meh.

It all goes in the same pocket until I get home. But I do have the ubiquitous coin jar there. A one-quart mason jar. Think I had close to $70 in it when it was full and I cashed it out once.

I always hated receiving the coins on top of the bills. My family owned a small store and I was taught to count the change out to the customers starting with the coins.

I wish they put the coins in first, with the bills on the bottom you have to crush them to secure the coins, if the coins go first they sit in the cup of your palm.

From the look of the comic, she first drops the bills into his hand, but, as he doesn’t either hold out his other hand, or transfer the bills out of his held-out hand, what the heck else is she supposed to do?

“I get angry get coins are placed on top of bills!” – A problem poor people don’t have.

It started when cashiers stopped counting back change and the machines told them how much money to return. In the olden days, if you gave someone $5 for $1.50 purchase, the cashier would give you 50 cents and say, “$1.50, that’s $2 and then (count out the bills) three, four, and five.” Now the cash register says $3.50. So the cashier gives you three bills and then 50 cents.

One of the first things I learned when I started work as a teenager many, many moons ago was how to correctly count back change. It was always coins first then small bills to large bills adding it up to the customer aloud as you did it. Nowadays you’re lucky if you get the correct change back or if they even acknowledge how much change you get back.

There is always the conversation of doing away with cash all together. I don’t think it will ever happen. To the drug cartels, cash is king. They will never allow politicians to do away with that.

And they slide off the bills on to the floor. Back in the mechanical and electro-mechanical cash register era the coins came first because the cashier counted up from the sale amount to the amount tendered. It took me a few minutes to learn how to do that when I worked in my dad’s store. Eventually I got to the point where I just visualized the coins.

Too bad complaining in general is not also a dying art.

because no one has ever learned about how to make change…or do the math in their head.

This 2008 strip was accurate at the time, but now it’s actually quite dated. Nowadays, I pay most in-person bills with my iPhone or my Apple Watch. I use cash almost exclusively for gasoline, and only in New Jersey, where it’s still illegal to pump your own.