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I watched a video on the demise of the penny and its predicament was so succinctly explained: everyone gets pennies as change but few carry them around let alon

I watched a video on the demise of the penny and its predicament was so succinctly explained: everyone gets pennies as change but few carry them around let alone spend them, so we are stuck producing ever more. One news outlet even did an "experiment" where they threw hundreds of pennies on the ground in a city on a busy morning and not one person stopped to pick any up.

basscomm 1y ago
> everyone gets pennies as change but few carry them around let alone spend them It's not just pennies, it's all coins. In a former life I worked in retail and almost nobody would fish around in their pockets for exact (or even near) change. They'd always hand me bills for their purchase even if they had just completed a transaction and had the coins in their pocket. That was in the 90's, and I still see it happening today, even though I'm no longer in the retail world.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- Retric 1y ago
  I’d regularly use quarters in vending machines, but not waste time during a retail transaction.
  - Symbiote 1y ago
    In most other countries, since prices are shown including all taxes you can often have the money ready while waiting in line etc.
    - guntars 1y ago
      Another aspect of the idiotic "we don't know what your tax is going to be" system (they do know it, actually) is that prices will typically end with .99 and the tax will push it over the next dollar and cause a bunch of change to be returned, instead of a single penny.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    > but not waste time during a retail transaction. we could just go back to writing checks while we're at it.
  - zahlman 1y ago
    It's amazing to me that people consider "saving time while paying money" to be a good thing. I will never "tap" my debit card as long as I have any legal option. Everyone else can wait for me to exercise my consumer rights, by inputting my PIN, verifying the amount displayed on screen etc.
    - Retric 1y ago
      Wasting people’s time is rude here not illegal. Courtesy may seem outdated to some, but it can occasionally come back to bite people. Being overly rude to waitstaff is something I’m concerned with around promotions because of how they might treat people inside the company. Without better information you extrapolate.
      - zahlman 1y ago
        ... How is this related to what I said?
        Retric 11mo ago
        > It's amazing to me that people consider "saving time while paying money" to be a good thing. If you’re checking it at a grocery store it’s likely there’s someone in line behind you waiting to pay, it’s a fairly common aspect of physical transactions. Waiting for you to count out your pennies is the kind of thing that evokes rage in people because it’s so rude.
        zahlman 11mo ago
        > If you’re checking it at a grocery store it’s likely there’s someone in line behind you waiting to pay I usually use the self check-out which is usually not at all busy when I get there. > Waiting for you to count out your pennies I was explicitly talking about using a debit card, and as I established repeatedly throughout the thread, my country hasn't used pennies for over a decade. But on the occasions that I pay cash, I do try to make exact change, because that's courteous to the cashier (and also just satisfies my aesthetic sense). I'm quick about this, because being the sort of person who posts on Hacker News, my mental arithmetic is pretty good. > is the kind of thing that evokes rage in people because it’s so rude. I've had people in front of me "waste" far more time than that because they had to cancel items (and deliberate over what to send back), struggle to pull things out of their cart, etc. It doesn't bother me. If I urgently needed to be somewhere else I would have planned my trip for another time. It already takes quite a while because I walk both ways (which I also enjoy quite a bit by the way). People ITT are talking about the value of time, but I can't reasonably value each second equally. Time is not nearly as fungible as money; ten seconds saved on an outing is just not going to translate into ten seconds spent on my projects. Nor can I make myself feel as though every moment not spent on acquiring capital is equally wasted. And I deeply resent the implication that using XYZ technology to save time is a moral imperative.
  - ocdtrekkie 1y ago
    I used to do this for vending machines but now it’s common to need more than eight of them per transaction so it's kinda silly.
- triceratops 1y ago
  That's incredibly bizarre. If I have coins my first instinct is to spend them ASAP so I don't have to carry them around.
- expedition32 1y ago
  Nowadays I pay for everything with my phone but back in the day I too hated using coins. Having to calculate and fish out coins? Ain't nobody got time for that.
  - basscomm 1y ago
    > Having to calculate and fish out coins? Ain't nobody got time for that. It's not that hard or time consuming if you actually use your change instead of letting it accumulate. I typically have less than a dollar in coins on my person at any given time because I spent it. If you're paying in cash, you either take time to count the change you're going to spend, or you take time waiting for the cashier to count the change you're going to get. Or you go cashless and avoid the whole thing
  - zahlman 1y ago
    It's amazing to me that there are people with this mindset. I enjoy the process.
- zahlman 1y ago
  I pay exact change whenever I can. And on the occasions where I can only make (exact change + simple amount), I often get deer-in-headlights looks from cashiers who can't do mental arithmetic and apparently haven't learned how to get the machine to understand payments of more than one physical bill or coin.
  - zahlman 1y ago
    I legitimately don't understand why people object to this strongly enough to downvote it without comment.
    - ssl-3 11mo ago
      The majority of the comment was spent on being disparaging towards people who work in retail. (Entering a discussion about that kind of topic can be a pretty sure way to invoke Godwin's Law, so the most sane and civil option is to downvote and walk away.)
- forinti 1y ago
  I like using coins because I'm always looking for commemorative coins. It's an interesting investment: you can immediately double or triple your money. Unfortunately, you rarely find them. I also keep the obvious fakes.
  - technothrasher 11mo ago
    The best unexpected coin I found in the drawer when I was working at a liquor store was an 1844 Belgian 1/2 Franc in with the dimes.
- jwrallie 11mo ago
  People are very lazy to do basic math. I always minimize the coins I am carrying by doing math on my head so that the combined value of a certain coin never exceeds the amount of the next available coin/bill, that way I never exceed the carrying capacity of my wallet. Most people I know just pocket everything and put on a box at home for undetermined time.
  - kevincox 11mo ago
    It's not even just that. Coins are heavy, large and noisy. Bills are way more convenient and cards even more so. If we could solve privacy issues with cards I would say get rid of all bills. Maybe just keep a few $100s in my wallet in case my cards get declined for some reason.
mooreds 1y ago
I remember moving out of a place (decades ago). I was the last roommate out, and so was stuck with some of the cleanup (wanted to get that deposit back!). One of the things we had was a ton of pennies (no idea why). I had no room in my car, so I spend a few minutes late at night flinging pennies out onto the sidewalk after a long day of cleaning the place.
- dylan604 1y ago
  Would it not have been better/easier for all involved to have just set a container of all the pennies on the street on your way out? If someone really could use them, you're kind of a dick for making them pick them up one at a time, but if they were all together...
  - mooreds 11mo ago
    Yeah, in retrospect that would have been better.
kristopolous 1y ago
I actually do that for numismatic reasons now. After today they will only increase in scarcity. Not that I imagine they'll ever be valuable mind you... I should really just go and get $5 worth somewhere. That would satiate my desires
dmd 1y ago
> not one person stopped to pick any up. Isn't that the old joke about the economist?
gniv 1y ago
Random anecdote: I go to a boulangerie almost daily (as one does here in France). There is one close to me that started charging 12 centimes for slicing the bread. I got annoyed with this and nowadays make a point to take lots of small change from the coin jar and use it. They don't seem to mind.
m463 1y ago
I use quarters in parking meters sometimes.
SkyPuncher 1y ago
Only place I've ever noticed them is the $0.01 pony ride that's been sitting at my grocery store for 30 years. Even they've gotten the hint and simply leave a tray of pennies next to it so people can actually use it.
- cartoonworld 11mo ago
  They’re probably doing that so your kid or some kid can use it and leave the penny tray because they aren’t trying to make money off of it anymore. It’s just for fun, sounds like a nice gesture.
  - SkyPuncher 11mo ago
    Yep. That's exactly what is was.
MarkLowenstein 1y ago
I always pick them up. Every penny buys enough pasta to keep you alive for another 15 minutes. So in case I ever go broke, I've staved off my eventual starvation by 15 minutes.
- comradesmith 1y ago
  I like this perspective :)
- hrimfaxi 1y ago
  How did you arrive at this conclusion?
  - MarkLowenstein 11mo ago
    It was always just an estimate but today I verified it with a chatbot before I made any claim about the time. Caught it in a mistake too, which I untangled by reminding it that food calories are actually kilocalories.

basscomm 1y ago

> everyone gets pennies as change but few carry them around let alone spend them It's not just pennies, it's all coins. In a former life I worked in retail and almost nobody would fish around in their pockets for exact (or even near) change. They'd always hand me bills for their purchase even if they had just completed a transaction and had the coins in their pocket. That was in the 90's, and I still see it happening today, even though I'm no longer in the retail world.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Retric 1y ago
I’d regularly use quarters in vending machines, but not waste time during a retail transaction.
- Symbiote 1y ago
  In most other countries, since prices are shown including all taxes you can often have the money ready while waiting in line etc.
  - guntars 1y ago
    Another aspect of the idiotic "we don't know what your tax is going to be" system (they do know it, actually) is that prices will typically end with .99 and the tax will push it over the next dollar and cause a bunch of change to be returned, instead of a single penny.
- dylan604 1y ago
  > but not waste time during a retail transaction. we could just go back to writing checks while we're at it.
- zahlman 1y ago
  It's amazing to me that people consider "saving time while paying money" to be a good thing. I will never "tap" my debit card as long as I have any legal option. Everyone else can wait for me to exercise my consumer rights, by inputting my PIN, verifying the amount displayed on screen etc.
  - Retric 1y ago
    Wasting people’s time is rude here not illegal. Courtesy may seem outdated to some, but it can occasionally come back to bite people. Being overly rude to waitstaff is something I’m concerned with around promotions because of how they might treat people inside the company. Without better information you extrapolate.
    - zahlman 1y ago
      ... How is this related to what I said?
      - Retric 11mo ago
        > It's amazing to me that people consider "saving time while paying money" to be a good thing. If you’re checking it at a grocery store it’s likely there’s someone in line behind you waiting to pay, it’s a fairly common aspect of physical transactions. Waiting for you to count out your pennies is the kind of thing that evokes rage in people because it’s so rude.
        zahlman 11mo ago
        > If you’re checking it at a grocery store it’s likely there’s someone in line behind you waiting to pay I usually use the self check-out which is usually not at all busy when I get there. > Waiting for you to count out your pennies I was explicitly talking about using a debit card, and as I established repeatedly throughout the thread, my country hasn't used pennies for over a decade. But on the occasions that I pay cash, I do try to make exact change, because that's courteous to the cashier (and also just satisfies my aesthetic sense). I'm quick about this, because being the sort of person who posts on Hacker News, my mental arithmetic is pretty good. > is the kind of thing that evokes rage in people because it’s so rude. I've had people in front of me "waste" far more time than that because they had to cancel items (and deliberate over what to send back), struggle to pull things out of their cart, etc. It doesn't bother me. If I urgently needed to be somewhere else I would have planned my trip for another time. It already takes quite a while because I walk both ways (which I also enjoy quite a bit by the way). People ITT are talking about the value of time, but I can't reasonably value each second equally. Time is not nearly as fungible as money; ten seconds saved on an outing is just not going to translate into ten seconds spent on my projects. Nor can I make myself feel as though every moment not spent on acquiring capital is equally wasted. And I deeply resent the implication that using XYZ technology to save time is a moral imperative.
- ocdtrekkie 1y ago
  I used to do this for vending machines but now it’s common to need more than eight of them per transaction so it's kinda silly.
triceratops 1y ago
That's incredibly bizarre. If I have coins my first instinct is to spend them ASAP so I don't have to carry them around.
expedition32 1y ago
Nowadays I pay for everything with my phone but back in the day I too hated using coins. Having to calculate and fish out coins? Ain't nobody got time for that.
- basscomm 1y ago
  > Having to calculate and fish out coins? Ain't nobody got time for that. It's not that hard or time consuming if you actually use your change instead of letting it accumulate. I typically have less than a dollar in coins on my person at any given time because I spent it. If you're paying in cash, you either take time to count the change you're going to spend, or you take time waiting for the cashier to count the change you're going to get. Or you go cashless and avoid the whole thing
- zahlman 1y ago
  It's amazing to me that there are people with this mindset. I enjoy the process.
zahlman 1y ago
I pay exact change whenever I can. And on the occasions where I can only make (exact change + simple amount), I often get deer-in-headlights looks from cashiers who can't do mental arithmetic and apparently haven't learned how to get the machine to understand payments of more than one physical bill or coin.
- zahlman 1y ago
  I legitimately don't understand why people object to this strongly enough to downvote it without comment.
  - ssl-3 11mo ago
    The majority of the comment was spent on being disparaging towards people who work in retail. (Entering a discussion about that kind of topic can be a pretty sure way to invoke Godwin's Law, so the most sane and civil option is to downvote and walk away.)
forinti 1y ago
I like using coins because I'm always looking for commemorative coins. It's an interesting investment: you can immediately double or triple your money. Unfortunately, you rarely find them. I also keep the obvious fakes.
- technothrasher 11mo ago
  The best unexpected coin I found in the drawer when I was working at a liquor store was an 1844 Belgian 1/2 Franc in with the dimes.
jwrallie 11mo ago
People are very lazy to do basic math. I always minimize the coins I am carrying by doing math on my head so that the combined value of a certain coin never exceeds the amount of the next available coin/bill, that way I never exceed the carrying capacity of my wallet. Most people I know just pocket everything and put on a box at home for undetermined time.
- kevincox 11mo ago
  It's not even just that. Coins are heavy, large and noisy. Bills are way more convenient and cards even more so. If we could solve privacy issues with cards I would say get rid of all bills. Maybe just keep a few $100s in my wallet in case my cards get declined for some reason.

mooreds 1y ago

I remember moving out of a place (decades ago). I was the last roommate out, and so was stuck with some of the cleanup (wanted to get that deposit back!). One of the things we had was a ton of pennies (no idea why). I had no room in my car, so I spend a few minutes late at night flinging pennies out onto the sidewalk after a long day of cleaning the place.

dylan604 1y ago
Would it not have been better/easier for all involved to have just set a container of all the pennies on the street on your way out? If someone really could use them, you're kind of a dick for making them pick them up one at a time, but if they were all together...
- mooreds 11mo ago
  Yeah, in retrospect that would have been better.

kristopolous 1y ago

I actually do that for numismatic reasons now. After today they will only increase in scarcity. Not that I imagine they'll ever be valuable mind you... I should really just go and get $5 worth somewhere. That would satiate my desires

dmd 1y ago

> not one person stopped to pick any up. Isn't that the old joke about the economist?

gniv 1y ago

Random anecdote: I go to a boulangerie almost daily (as one does here in France). There is one close to me that started charging 12 centimes for slicing the bread. I got annoyed with this and nowadays make a point to take lots of small change from the coin jar and use it. They don't seem to mind.

m463 1y ago

I use quarters in parking meters sometimes.

SkyPuncher 1y ago

Only place I've ever noticed them is the $0.01 pony ride that's been sitting at my grocery store for 30 years. Even they've gotten the hint and simply leave a tray of pennies next to it so people can actually use it.

cartoonworld 11mo ago
They’re probably doing that so your kid or some kid can use it and leave the penny tray because they aren’t trying to make money off of it anymore. It’s just for fun, sounds like a nice gesture.
- SkyPuncher 11mo ago
  Yep. That's exactly what is was.

MarkLowenstein 1y ago

I always pick them up. Every penny buys enough pasta to keep you alive for another 15 minutes. So in case I ever go broke, I've staved off my eventual starvation by 15 minutes.

comradesmith 1y ago
I like this perspective :)
hrimfaxi 1y ago
How did you arrive at this conclusion?
- MarkLowenstein 11mo ago
  It was always just an estimate but today I verified it with a chatbot before I made any claim about the time. Caught it in a mistake too, which I untangled by reminding it that food calories are actually kilocalories.