I work at a fine establishment. We deal in imported coffees, teas, and fine pastries. We're an internationally acclaimed name. And we have a drive thru.
Every day people come through said drive thru and they purchase their coffee or tea or fine pastry hand me their money and say "keep the change."
Now I know what you're saying. "How nice! They appreciated your service and are returning the favor with a small gratuity!"
Wrong.
Now occasionally this actually does occur. Someone is impressed with my ability to press buttons on machines to dispense pre-measured amounts of dairy and sweetner to thicken and sweetened their overpriced cup of java. "Wow this is the greatest cup of coffee I've ever tasted!" they exclaim. "Please accept this quarter to understand the gravity of my thanks."
But this is rare.
More often than not, I hand the person their meal, they hand me their money. I smile and turn to get their change... they speed off. "I can't be bothered with 94 cents!" they're thinking. "Now if I were receiving a full dollar, sure I would wait. But 6 cents less! That's petty change!"
It's a cultural dilema. Americans do not like change (though somehow Obama one... ooh. zinger...). Case in point, the new gold dollars. Every once in a while someone will hand me one, and I'm shocked but, as is being discovered by bank tellers everywhere, people don't want to carry around change when they can carry neat bills.
Think of it in a practical sense. It doesn't make sense to carry around cents in your wallet since bills fit so neatly inside!
So what's the point?
There's almost no point. But I predict a future where americans carry around no change, to the point where change ceases to exist. Change will become a thing of the past, and that may be change to believe in.
Thought for thinking:
With the increase of calculator ability, does learning math become superfluous? With the increased of online dictionary/thesaurus ability, does using words like superfluous become less impressive?
