Unfiltered Story #239452

I work at an office in Tokyo. On the first floor of our building there’s a convenience store (combini) that I go to almost every day to buy lunch, drinks, etc. so I’m pretty familiar with most of the weekday shift workers.
One day I come in and there’s a new girl training on the registers. It’s obvious that this girl is *very* new and has clearly never touched a cash register before in her life. She looks incredibly nervous.
When it’s my turn to pay, I realize that I’m out of small bills/change. Even though my total is only a few hundred yen, I’ve only got a 10,000 yen bill. 10,000 yen is the denomination that you get from the ATM, so having to break one for a small purchase is fairly common — still, I always feel kind of bad whenever it happens.
In Japan, cashiers *always* give you your bills first, then the small change — this way you have a chance to put the bills in your wallet while the cashier is counting out the coins, so you don’t have to worry about trying to stuff everything in at the same time and dropping the coins. It’s actually incredibly convenient!
This time, I notice the new cashier is getting the coins first — which strikes me as odd, but I figure she’s just new and hasn’t gotten the standard process down yet. But then she hands me a receipt showing that I paid 1,000 yen and starts to call over the next customer.

Me: Um… sorry, but I’m pretty sure I gave you a 10,000 yen bill….

She just stares blankly at me.

Me: (points to receipt) This says I paid 1,000 yen but I’m almost certain I gave you a 10,000. (She just keeps staring at me like a deer in headlights) Is there any way to check?

At this point the cashier at the next register, who I recognize, has noticed our conversation and comes over to try and help. He immediately offers to go check the security footage in the back to see what I paid with, which I feel kind of bad about — at this point I’ve started to wonder if maybe I was just mistaken, but he assures me it’s fine.

A minute later another worker yells out from the back room, “It was a ten thousand!” and they open up the register again to give me the rest of my change.
The poor new cashier was nervous before, but she’s practically petrified now and counts out my 9,000 yen change about five times before giving me the cash. I felt really bad for her because I knew at the least she was going to get yelled at for the mistake later. But I’m still glad I said something, otherwise I would have been out 90 bucks!

In the end, I’m not sure if she was fired or transferred to a slower shift, but I haven’t seen her in that combini since.