making change

A friend's retail business doesn't take cash any more. At first this seemed odd. He said if you take cash, you have to train staff in it, and they can't do it. I didn't believe him.  This is such a basic part of functional numeracy that you can take it for granted, for, say, 98% of the population.

Then, these four anecdotes on making change from Autumn 2024.

In a restaurant in Guernsey, the bill was 41.xx GBP (service charge had already been added), and I handed over 51.30 (ish) to make the change easier.  The chap was taking ages, so I zoned out. When I came to, I realised he was counting out pound notes. The change should have been a tenner plus pennies. I said something, and it became clear he was making change from 50.00 GBP. He escalated to more senior team member, who cottoned on to give a tenner. T

In Oxford, in a cafe, I ordered a coffee. 3.45 GBP. I handed over a twenty plus the 45p. She knew to open the till, but beyond this, was completely at a loss. She didn't think the till contained enough to make change, which would have been 17 GBP, less than one hour's wages at the median wage. She appealed to her manager, who asked me how much change was due. I said seventeen pounds. The manager got three fivers and a two pound coin from the till and gave them to me.

I ordered a coffee in a cafe in London. I eventually established that it was 3.50 GBP (people have stopped saying amounts. Prices are communicated via the display on the card machine. If paying cash, the price is not communicated). I have 4 GBP over. She seemed confused, turned to her manager, and said "do we have 50p?". The manager came over, opeend the til, and took out a 50 pence piece from the 50 pence pieces section, and handed it to me.

Some workers needed to buy things so I made a petty cash pouch. It kept coming in for reconciliation with a ton of coins, taking a long time to count. I asked them to try and minimise the amount of loose change in there. Still it came back heavy with lots of coins. So I sat down with one and ran through some examples. If the amount due is this, you do that. Then you end up with less coins. This did work, more or less.

So now I believe: my friend's business doesn't take cash because people are generally unable to do the arithmetic and apply the common sense. It's easy to forget that intelligence in humans is remarkably rare. Not genius intelligence, but a basic, functional intelligence.

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