The Lost Art Of Counting Back

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Over the course of several years of retail and customer service, I discovered a couple of very important rules that held true in nearly every encounter.  The first and foremost of these is that Americans have learned they can be jerks to that stooge behind the counter and get away with it, except for when they can't.  I truly wish businesses were more progressive in this aspect; there's a difference between "the customer is always right" and "the customer is usually right, but also can be a complete jerk".  I've not once met a person who, upon being informed that their continuing attitude would result in immediate ejection from the storefront, continues to be jerk.  They most often become sullen for a second and then move right along into being a model customer (bless their rotten hearts).

The other important rule I'll talk about today is that people rarely look at what you give them until they are forced to.  If you've ever been through a fast food restaurant's drive-thru, ordered successfully, and then arrived at work or home only to find that what you had was of less value than what you paid for, you've been given a hard lesson in this.  However, it gets worse!  When folks pay with cash, they're so blithely unconcerned about how much you give back that you could give back fives in place of tens all day long and only a handful of folks would notice right then and there.  Granted, this can easily result in them going home, realizing they'd been had, and then all reconvening at your location with pitchforks and torches, but still...

In any case, here's how you count back change to someone (and how you make sure a cashier is counting back your change right to you):

1. Start with the amount the customer Paid
2. Add pennies to the total until their change ends in a 0 or 5
3. Add a nickel and one or two dimes until they reach 00, 25, 50, or 75 cents in change
4. Add quarters until their change ends in 00.  You now have their change!
5. If you had to grab change, add a dollar to their total and forget about how much change they had
6. Add twenties until adding another will put you over what they paid you
7. Add tens until adding another will put you over what they paid you (a pattern!)
8. Add fives until adding another will put you over what they paid you
9. Add ones until you MATCH what they paid you
10. Here's the magic: Hand them their change and say how much it is, and then "makes (add change to total)"
11. Then keep adding to that, starting with the smallest bills (ones) first
12. When you've counted everything, the amount you'll be saying is what they paid you!

If you're getting change counted back to you, follow steps 10-13 only and you'll know it's right.

It looks long-winded, but after you've done it a few times, it makes a wonderful kind of sense to both your brain and your hands.  Also, if they gave you change so that you'd give them bigger coins (or none at all), you have to do the change part with different rules.  That's okay, because they've already made it easier on you!

Why should you care about that mess at all?  After all, now that we're a paragraph away from that scary thing, I can say that it does look complicated. Well, for starters, it means that the cashier knows they gave you the right amount (which is good for them) and that you got the right amount too (which is good for you).  It also saves you the trouble of ever having to go back and convince a cashier (or *giggle* their manager) that they need to give you more money.  There's also some word coming through the grapevine that cash is local-friendly because running credit cards is quite expensive for small-dollar-item places (Visa has to get paid too, you know).

Now you know.  Retail's hard on everybody, folks!  Show some compassion to the working stiff behind the counter and the experience can be better for the both of you!


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I've added an actual, honest-to-god example here.  I didn't include it with the main stuff because few folks wants to go through a checklist and then hear about it all over again right away.  Come back in a little bit and give it a try:
Customer buys a candy bar ($1.09) and pays with a $20
Start with 09 cents
Take out a penny, have 10 cents
Take out a nickel and a dime, have 25 cents
Take out three quarters, have 00 cents
Took out money, so add a dollar to total, which is $2 now
Can I use a $20?  Nope, $22 is too high!
Can I take a $10? Yep, a ten makes the total $12
Can I take a $5? Yep, a five makes the total $17
Three $1 gets me to $20, which is what they gave me

At this point, I look in my hand, see a penny, a nickel, a dime, and three quarters.  I hand them this terrible mess and say "Ninety-one cents makes two dollars", and then count up with the smaller bills first.  "Three, Four, Five" is the ones, "Ten" is the five-spot, "and Twenty" when I tack that ten on there.  Since I was counting bills right where the customer could see, they're already neat and in order, and they had a second to put away their change.  Perfect for the OCD in everybody!
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