Coinage Optimizer

I consider myself a “coinage optimizer”, a definition that you won’t find on Wikipedia because it is a term I have made up, but a fitting term to describe the following characteristic of mine, that being:

“Change carrying hater”.

Whenever I make a cash purchase, I always try to give the cashier a cash amount that will return me the least amount of change. Recently, I had the following situation happen to me three times:

The cost of the items I purchased was something dollars and two cents, however, I only had something dollars and a penny.

Here are the results:

1) Starbucks: The cashier let me off the hook with a “don’t worry about it”.
2) Subway: The cashier said “no problem” but did not end up returning any change, while I was expecting something.
3) Target: The cashier was a stickler, almost giving me back $0.99 before I tried to negotiate a better coinage return.

I thought to myself, is it appropriate to ask such a favour? I am a simple law-abiding citizen who just doesn’t want to sit on an extra-heavy wallet filled with change. I ask you the people to be the judge or if you’re my friend, be a biased judge in my favour.