How to give customers change

Everyone has gone to a convenience store in their lifetime. Some more than others, I have no doubt.

So you're in your local convenience store (not unlike the Quik Stop in Kevin Smith's film Clerks), and you're buying staples..

Doritos, smokes (Marlboro Menthol Ultra Lights 100s, perhaps), Twiglets(tm), Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi, all the important things. The not-so-bright green light on the cash register chings at you, saying $11.52!

You open your wallet and hand your friendly store clerk a crisp, fresh new twenty dollar bill.

Now, depending on what kind of neighborhood you live in, your clerk may or may not examine the bill before he puts it in the drawer, but that's neither here nor there, and I only mention it here to extend any tension you might have in wondering where I'm going with the narrative here.

The next thing that happens is what's important. Now imagine the scene. You're standing there with your wallet open in one hand and your other hand out for your $8.48.

There are a couple of different ways that your clerk can hand you your change. He may give you the loose change first and then the bills, along the lines of..

handing you the 48 cents and saying

"That's 12..."

then handing you the bills, let's say three singles

"13, 14, 15..."

finally handing you a five

"and five is twenty."

That's cool, and almost any variation on that is fine.

The very very bad way for a clerk to hand you your change (and I cannot tell you how much this infuriates me) is this...

The clerks hands you your bills and then puts the change in your hand on top of that.

Picture it, you have your wallet in one hand and then the bills with the change on top of it in the other hand. So what you have to to do is kind of drop the change into your pocket without letting go of any of the bills and then put the bills in your wallet.

Or...

You have to put it all in your wallet and then fish the change out later.

Or...

Put the bills and the change in your pocket, then fish out the bills, which by now are all crinkly and gross.

None of these solutions pleases me much. Perhaps I'm the only one who has encountered this problem, but if this node helps just one person avert this harrowing situation, then I will have felt that my life has not been in vain.