Life in progress

Tag Archives: pennies


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Change – Stream of Consciousness Saturday

So Alex and I were rolling pennies this morning and I was starting to realize I keep too much. Not only change, which sits on tables, in jars, and in the case of what we were rolling, a four litre juice container (it was heavy), but all the ‘stuff’ I’ve accumulated over the years.

I’m also trying to sell my mother’s condo, which is full of ‘stuff.’ Three bedrooms worth and not really enough room to sort it, so there are boxes on their way, courtesy of my dear friend John and his pick up truck, that will go into my basement to be emptied and sorted. Then I’ll have a garage sale to get rid of said stuff…

…which will probably land me a bunch more change to roll. Does it ever end?

 

Prompt: Change

This post is part of SoCS: https://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/05/02/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-may-314/ 

Please click on the link to get the details, and write a post of your own!


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Calculators – The downfall of mankind?

So I’m in the grocery store today. You can probably figure out from the title where this is going.

For my international friends I’ll share some background to the story. Recently in Canada we did away with the physical penny, which means if you’re paying with cash they now round it off to the closest 5 cents. Not so with debit and credit cards. So my bill came to $4.07. I asked for a plastic bag and the cashier added another $.06 onto the bill to make it $4.13, which is what I paid with my debit card.

I commented to the cashier, since there was no one else in line, that the government and/or the stores are really making money on this penny thing, because if I was paying cash she would have asked me for $4.05 but the plastic bag would have cost me $.10 because $4.13 would have rounded up to $4.15. She looked confused. So I went on to explain that the difference between $4.05 and $4.15 was  more than the $.06 that the bag cost but by that time I’d lost her. She was staring in the other direction looking for customers (that weren’t there) and ignoring me.

More and more I’m seeing this. As the kids come out of school and start working in stores with cash registers that tell them how much change to give (when they deal with cash at all) they’re at a complete loss if they ever have to figure it out for themselves. I should probably add that the cashier I had today was in her early twenties.

Between this and text shorthand, I’m all but ready to give up on the future of mankind.