Hayden wanted to buy a $4 wood plaque for his mother as part of a last-minute birthday gift, but Michael’s wouldn’t accept 16 quarters as payment. “It’s store policy not to accept change,” a cashier explained, forcing an embarrassed Hayden to borrow a few bucks from his younger sister.
Hayden writes:
I recently went to Michael’s in Hemet, California to make a last minute birthday present for my mother. I didn’t have money on me at the time and the bank was closed so I had to use 4 dollars in quarters to buy a wood plaque. When I went to check out, an older woman told me “It’s story policy not to accept change.”
Is it really legal for a store to not accept change? It’s still legal tender, and it’s not as if I was paying in pennies; it was quarters and I was counting them out for the cashier.
I was in a hurry so I had to borrow money from my younger sister to buy it, which was pretty embarrassing.
Michael’s is about 10 miles farther from my house than Joanne’s, but needless to say I’m not going back. At least Joanne’s accepts legal money.
It’s not like this in other countries. Watch here as a pair of Marines try to shock an unsuspecting Japanese waitress by paying for their whole meal with nothing but change:
It’s not an issue because it’s not unreasonable to ask employees to count change.
(Photo: seawallrunner)
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Good point. If he had enough time and patience, he should buy one item (less than a dollar) using his quarters… Do that 4 times… Then return all the items getting store credit or cash ( he doesn’t accept change because it is so hard to spend…Ha HA)… Then use that money or credit toget his real purchase. When finished… ask do you think your policy makes sense now?
This isn’t change we can believe in.
I have paid for things entirely in change at Michael’s before with no problems. Perhaps the cashier misunderstood a “no rolled coins” policy (I’ve seen people fill a dimes roll with pennies and put a dime at either end to make it look legit) or maybe the cashier did not want to count quarters.
I have to say that every checkout experience I’ve had at any Michael’s store has taken much much longer than any checkout anywhere else- even if it’s just one item and I’m paying with a card.
It’s true, most cashiers today are uneducated idiots. I was a cashier as a 16 year old. I worked at a news stand and we had one of those old fashioned mechanical cash registers which were little more than adding machines. They didn’t calculate change.
That was the job of the cashier. I was taught a little trick that ALL cashiers should still know to this day. It’s called COUNTING FORWARD. There is no real math involved at all. It’s simply counting forward from whatever the total is to the amount given by the customer.
It’s so simple a fucking monkey could do it! Unfortunately most cashiers today are dumber than monkeys. Instead they rely absolutely on the register to think for them. God help us all.
I work at Michaels, and at a Southern California store. I work as a cashier sometimes, and I do take change as a payment. I will see what I can do and look for the “policy.”
I think you probably got a really frustrated employee. I’m kind of new at the store I work at, and to be completely honest… I’m not getting the greatest training. I think this might be the case at the Hemet store.
You don’t deserve the treatment you got. I hope someone from corporate reads this and enforce mandatory training for new employees. It should be that way everywhere.
Having been a former red-apron register jockey years ago, i can tell you that at least THEN it was not store policy. This, I think, should be obvious.
What Michael’s DOES have is an absolutely retarded system called “1 + 1″ which states that at any given time, there should only be 1 person currently being totaled at the register, and 1 person waiting in line. This would be great except they also only schedule the bare minimum of cashiers to get by (also policy, in order to save money). The registers are actually set up to keep track of how fast people are going, and if they go don’t go fast enough, both the cashier and the manager-on-duty take a hit from corporate. Of course what this all means is that you quit accepting change. Obviously. Obvious to everyone but Michael’s Corporate.
Speaking as a twice-former cashier (Once for an unfortunate 6 months of my life at Staples, which I’ll never get back *shudder*), I’m a bit perplexed… usually cashiers are hard up for quarters.
@xip: Most places are happy to accept coins, within reason.
Make sure you’re the only person in line, or that they have multiple cashiers if you must pay with excessive coins.
I’m not *reccommending* paying in all pennies as a habit, but if that is all you have, a grocery store is not going to turn you away.
Be reasonable with your mad sack of coins, go to their customer service desk and count it out with a manager and just ask to get paper bills before you shop if it’s a rushed time of day.
Back to the original article, the cashier said “It’s story policy not to accept change.”
Is there change in their register?
Perhaps she misunderstands the ‘policy’ of not taking *excessive* amounts of change to mean that they never take any, or is following it precisely, but wording her rejection poorly.
Why don’t the self server checkout counters have coin dump bowls instead of small slots??? These have change dump bowls…
Coinstar, et al, of course
How ironic is it that the last time I went to Michael’s, I asked if the cashier could give me 4 quarters fo a dollar and she couldn’t? I didn’t plan on going back to Michael’s anyhow. Too many old ladies with carts full of millions of tiny things. Then they want to talk about what craft they are doing with each item, asking the cashier’s opinion, etc. You go in to buy 1 or 2 items and it takes an eternity.
Having worked in retail, I can tell you that you can refuse change. Granted, common sense actually can come into play, but according to ‘accepting cash’ you are only REQUIRED to accept change UP TO the next bill. Which means, if you buy a $100 something, a retailer does not have to accept 100, $1 bills. They can force you to pay in larger tender. So, if you buy a $4 plaque, the retailer CAN refuse change totaling over $1 IF THEY CHOOSE.
Not only is counting large amounts of change annoying, and time consuming to make sure you are paid the right amount, but you then have to re-count it a second time to make sure you didn’t screw up the first, all AGAIN when closing down your drawer, and then ONCE MORE when doing the daily totals, and A FIFTH TIME when making a bank deposit. Would you want to count $4 in change five different times? In one day??
I think not!
Yikes! Over 100 comments, and I’m stupid enough to want to add mine. Store policy like this is due to the fact that most cashiers are assumed to have only minimal ability to count and add. Over time, this can add up to large variances in what’s in the till versus what’s on the ticker paper. While it’s not unusual to have a few dollars variance, anything over $20 is a red flag (the person is intentionally shorting either the business, the employer, or both with the intention of taking home some unearned cash).
I’ve even seen places where certain cashiers are not allowed to give out quarters or nickels or even fives or twenties. If they can count, they can use the digits on the display to know how much to give out (i.e. $27.33 is two ten-dollar bills, seven one-dollar bills, three dimes, and three pennies).
Sounds stupid, but when you’re dealing with a workforce that has real limitations, you need to find ways to overcome the liabilities those limitations impose. In some cases, training just won’t work. (And smart people won’t take those jobs, so hiring smarter employees isn’t an option)
LouisaTrigeminus here:
That’s another thing people don’t have to worry about much here, thieves. I cannot understand why the US tolerates crime and violence as much as it does. It must be a cultural thing.
@bagumpity
There are cash registers that count and deliver the change automatically. It might be in the best interest of some stores to implement these machines in order to eliminate overchanges.
What time was this? Perhaps the cashier had already counted down her drawer for change and didn’t want the extra quarters messing up her count? The drawer shouldn’t be counted down until after the last transaction, but it happens.
And my grandma fires people if they don’t count back change. My first boss did that too.
i started to do a news story on this matter b/c i love to bust corporate america when these things happen … BUT does anyone out there know hayden’s last name or how to reach her? i can’t find her. i called michael’s corporate for threir take … the hemet store manager doesn’t remember any such incident and the communications dept. says they have NO SUCH POLICY to not accept change. if anyone can shed light on any of this pls feel free to write me at
herbsiera@gmail.com
Maybe the cashier was feeling crabby, saw that OP was the perfect target for her irritability, and decided to try to ruin his day too by being nasty to him. I wonder if she would have said the same to someone who would clearly have challenged her, say, another crotchety old broad *points to self*. I would definitely have taken it to the manager and if it turns out that it was an “official” policy, which I doubt, by the time I left the store they would regret they ever drafted it.
Four dollars in quarters is not an inconvenience anywhere, for heaven’s sake.
i used to work as a Michaels Front End Supervisor.. let me tell you THAT POLICY is not true. That girl was being very lazy. Now if he was paying with a $50 or a $100 yeah a different story. She could take the $4 in change. I had customers pay in change and ive never made a deal about it. If they are willing to count out the change then it makes it easier if not, she needed to suck it up and take the money.
I used to work for Michaels in California and this was NOT a store policy. Unless its changed within the last ten months, I think this was just a bitchy cashier. Any manager would have taken the quarters and have been done with it.
I work at Michaels, in Northern Michigan. And I have to say that you shouldn’t blame an entire corporation on what one Cashier did. I tell people all the time that I like it when they pay in quarters, because it saves me from getting change when we’re busy, and holding up a line. I’ve never heard of anyone refusing someone’s money, even when old ladies pay me in pennies and dimes.
But I’ve been there for two years just about, and I HAVE seen a lot of cashiers who haven’t been there long, and are too stupid or lazy to do their job. They’ve refused Jo Ann coupons, which we take, they’ve told someone we can’t return things that we can, blah blah blah. And it reflects bad on the store as a whole.
I’m not saying you should always blame the cashier, because in some cases it isn’t our fault. Like when people blow up at us for not being able to take all 10 of their coupons at once. But use your head about what’s logical and what’s not, and ask to see a manager. I feel bad for the little boy, and anyone who won’t shop there any more because they heard this story.