So, I was at a laundromat in Maine dropping off some linens after renting a cottage for a week. The woman behind the counter weighed the laundry and said, “That’ll be $9.80, please.” I gave her a $20 bill. She gave me back two dimes and $10, saying as she did, “20 makes 10 and 10 makes 20.”
All the way back to the car I kept repeating that line to myself. “Twenty makes 10 and 10 makes 20.” It makes perfect sense and no sense at all at the same time.
Few people anymore know how to count back change. The cash registers nowadays tell the cashier how much money to give back and the cashier doesn’t have to do any work.
Back in my youth, you would start with the amount of the purchase, add every coin and bill to that amount and announce the running total to the customer, starting with the smallest denomination, as you placed it in the customer’s hand, up to the amount of the cash the customer had tendered.
That’s what the laundramat woman was doing, shorthand:
“Nine dollars and eighty cents.”
“Ninety …” (hand the customer a dime)
“Ten dollars …” (hand the customer another dime)
“And ten makes twenty dollars.” (hand the customer a ten dollar bill)
Best wishes,
Jerry
Doesn’t everybody count change this way? It’s the way I was taught, and it seems to be the way everybody does it around here, except folks who work at Walmart, since the machine tells them how much to count.
Well, it’s a very practical and common sense, old-fashioned way to count change, which all young people should learn. My daughter works at the local produce stand and was taught to do that right away. The one who works at the toy store relies on the electronic cash register.
That way of counting is backwards to me though, because I tend to want to start with the amount I handed over and subtract. But as long as you can make the initial leap that this counter-intuitive way of computing will get you there accurately, it’s probably easier for most brains.
Most wait for the digital readout to tell them what to give back anymore. But counting back change and making it a polite encounter is yet another victim of the times…
In today’s ‘hurry-up’ world, expect them to secretly count your change (in front of you) hand you the bills and drop the coins on top of it!
NEXT !!
I rarely hear people count back change anymore, and I suspect that many clerks couldn’t do it if they wanted to. My local drug store has a hopper where the coins in the change are deposited. The coin hopper isn’t very close to where the clerk is handing back the bills in a pile with your receipt. The clerks never mention that the coin part of the change is coming back separately. In fact, the last time that I was there the coin hopper had someone else’s change in it, and my coins fell on top of what was already there. I asked the clerk if she had any other machines that I could play, since I made a little money on this one. She gave my a glazed-over look as if she didn’t know what I was talking about. Yes, we can wish for the time when the clerk was qualified to count back change, but I am afraid that the world is going in a different direction.
When I worked in the bank as a teller, we had a few automatic money machines at our teller windows. If a customer cashed a check, say for $585, the money popped up from the machine, and I was instructed to hand it to the customer without counting it or countring it back to the customer, ostensibly, to save time. Of course, the machine never made errors, management thought. Usually, the customer would grab the wad of bills and start counting it, often on the other side of the counter where I couldn’t see what was going on. If they announced that they were $20 short, then what were you supposed to do, since you hadn’t actually counted it yourself, and you couldn’t see the customers hands as they were counting the cash? Rather than saving time, the method took more time and was problematic for the reason just mentioned.
A word in defense of cashiers…because I am one.
Many of us DO know perfectly well how to count change, but using the register prevents huge costly errors, and especially helps prevent change making scammers take advantage of harried, underpaid cashiers by bullying them.
We often don’t know how much an item costs…managers program the registers. Don’t complain to me about the prices because they are not under my jurisdiction.
And cashiers have equal complaints about the people who never have their wallets out when they get to the head of the line…who hold up lines by having to pull out not only a wallet but a change purse and absolutely MUST pay with exact change even if they have to dig for it and there are 20 people behind them in line…who complain because they bought a ten dollar lunch and it costs $10.60…but it SAID $10 on the menu!
Anyway, Brad, hope you had a nice time in Maine! My favorite change count is always for $1.41
Sincerely,
Tyg aka cashier at Cafe on the Park, New Britain Museum of American Art (Tues + Wed 11:30 thru 3:30)
Shorthand! 
Just to clarify, I had no trouble understanding what she meant (I’ve heard people count out change that way all my life), it’s just that taken out of context the phrase “20 makes 10 and 10 makes 20” is amazingly nonsensical. If someone from another country or culture had been watching they would have been totally bewildered. I’m not saying it’s wrong to count out change that way, I just thought it was funny.
Sounds like something I would have said spaced out at the end of a shift back in my cashier / waitress days. The “script” tends to blend into a big garbled pile of total gibberish after enough repetition.
I was told to use the machine to tell me how much change to give back, but I didn’t. It was a complete waste of time, imo. My brain works faster than my fingers, and I saved myself punching in the amount of money I was given.
I was fortunate in that my first place of employment (where I worked for three summers as a teenager) didn’t have a cash register…just a cash box. I was forced to learn to count change back (not to mention add quickly in my head!), and now do it automatically. Just a short while back I was selling refreshments at a CCÉ event, and found myself counting back change without even thinking about it.
Redwolf
Heh. During high school, I had a part-time job at a rural gas (aka petrol) station. One employee on duty, no cash register, no cash box. I kept the wad of bills in one pocket, and the coins in another.
(My brother, who worked there before I did, was robbed at gunpoint. I was lucky enough to never experience that.)
Great pics! What a lovely retreat!
Freaky!
Almost the exact same thing happened to me today.
I bought a sandwich, salad and drink at a little deli in town. The total was (gasp!) $9.80, and the woman at the counter counted back my change thus: “Twenty’s ten and ten’s twenty.” Which I thought was fun, but then I read this thread and my brain exploded. I better get a mop.
Cleanup on aisle two!
Redwolf
“20 makes 10 and 10 makes 20” … almost like a Zen Koan.
I should add that I’ve always made it a policy to count back change even when using a cash register that tells me how much change to return. It just seems like one more layer of protection for me (I can be sure that I haven’t accidentally grabbed two ones stuck together or a 20 instead of a 10 and, as someone else noted, the customer can’t turn around and say “hey, you gave me a 10 and it should have been a 20!”)
My pet peeve in a shopping line? People who insist on remaining in line while they put their change away, enter the purchase in their check book, put away their receipt, etc., while in the meantime the cashier is already running my purchase and said customer is blocking MY way to the credit card machine or check writing area. Get a clue, folks…grab your change and your receipt and step out of the way to do your personal business!
Redwolf
I worked as a cashier at a department store in college and couldn’t figure out how people were making change so quickly. This older ( 35 ish) lady showed me the “start from the smallest denomination and work up” trick and lo and behold, I was making change without thinking about it.
Fast forward 25+ years and my kids were being taught addition and subtraction skills in grammar school with pennies and dimes. We used to make change as a game, but I didn’t show them how. They couldn’t figure out how dad was able to make change so quick without pen and paper. Once I showed them, it became a game of how fast can you do it before your sister or brother.
I’m surprised no-one has mentioned the cardinal rule - NEVER put the customer’s money into the till until you have given them their change. This forstalls any arguing about what they paid.
djm