A long time ago, I worked at a company that gave me a retirement account through a specific pension provider. I eventually changed jobs to a different company that provided a retirement account through another provider. I called them to roll my old account funds into my new one.

Call Center Worker: “We can do that for you, but there is a $50 account closing fee.”

Me: “Why do you have an account closing fee?”

Call Center Worker: “That’s just our standard admin fee for closing the account.”

Me: “Okay, well then I’ll leave it open, but I’ll transfer everything except one dollar.”

Call Center Worker: “We require a $50 minimum in case you do want to close at a later date.”

Me: “Okay, fine, roll over all my funds except for $50. I’ll keep the account open.”

I tell them to send me quarterly updates in my $50 (I opt in for the paper update, sent through the mail). They invest it and make it grow, and so each quarter I get them to transfer over all but $50 of my account balance. It’s usually just a check for a few dollars, but they do it all the same. 

By this point, I’ve cost them way more than $50 of service, postage, and checks they mail to me, but I still have a few decades to retirement. Let’s see how much I can cost them before they give me my $50.

My goddaughter was eight at the time of this story. She was going for one of her scout badges, and it required that she run some sort of small commercial enterprise, like a bake sale or a lemonade stand.

She decides to be creative and make ‘hot coco-balls’. She buys chocolate molds, pours melted chocolate into them, fills them with cocoa powder (and sometimes marshmallows), and seals them. She then waits for them to dry, then decorates them with painted chocolate and sprinkles.

She’s been selling these balls, caramel apples, and cups of fresh milk from a stand. Her parents have asked me to take a look at her books for them because I’m an accountant, and her numbers don’t match up. 

The amount of cash she has brought in is much higher than her recorded sales, but her inventory hasn’t been dropping proportionally as though she were selling off the books. If this were a business, I’d suspect money laundering or that they were keeping a separate set of books for an illegal business in the basement. 

But I also notice another interesting detail: There are plenty of small bills in the till, and her parents have not reported frequently going to the bank to break larger bills. Most businesses quickly run out of small bills and need to break them. This gives me an idea of the likely cause.

So, I sit down with my goddaughter and ask very gently:

Me: “[Goddaughter], what are you doing when someone asks for change?”

Goddaughter: *Extremely sweetly.* “I say thank you for the tip, and smile at them until they stop asking.”

Mystery solved.

Reading this story reminded me of my own experience. I’m buying a pack of twenty AA batteries. The cashier scans the barcode, and it doesn’t ring up.

Cashier: “Hmm. Must be an individual code. Let me just scan one of the batteries instead.”

She opens the package, pulls out one lonely AA battery, and scans it. The screen beeps. $3.49. Then, with full confidence, she manually multiplies it by twenty.

Cashier: “That’ll be $69.80.”

Me: “I think that’s the price for the whole pack, not each battery.”

Cashier: *Tilts her head like she’s pondering the mysteries of the universe.* “But it says $3.49 each.”

Me: “Right, but that’s the price for the pack.”

Cashier: “Still… twenty batteries…” *Taps calculator.* “…times $3.49 equals…”

Me: “—Yeah, I can see how math works, but that’s not what I’m talking about. The price is for the whole pack, not each individual battery.”

She frowns, clearly not convinced, and calls her supervisor. The supervisor glances at the register for about two seconds.

Supervisor: “No, it’s $3.49 for the pack, not each one.”

Cashier: “Ohhhhhh. Okay!”

She cancels the line item, rescans the whole pack, and the price drops back down to $3.49. Then she looks at me with total sincerity and says:

Cashier: “You just saved $66.31! Would you like to sign up for our rewards card?”

Customer: “Gimme a national lottery ticket. Make sure it’s a winner! Ha ha!”

Me: “Every ticket is a guaranteed winner! Either you or the state will win!”

Customer: “That sounds like a rehearsed answer.”

Me: “It is. I use it multiple times a day.”

Customer: “Ha. I… I guess you hear that joke a lot?”

Me: “As I said… multiple times a day.”

Customer: “Does it get annoying?”

Me: “Nails on a chalkboard, mate.”

Customer: “…fair enough.”

The guy came back a week later and told me he’d won £3.60!

I’m working the express checkout lane (ten items or less) during a rush. My customers are parents, and they have their young child place a large bag of coins on my counter.

Customer: “Now, count out your allowance for the nice lady.”

So, I’m just standing there watching while this kid counts out a few dollars’ worth of pennies and nickels.

I keep making more and more exaggerated and dramatic attempts to look at the line as it’s getting longer, but these oblivious idiots are just focusing on their son, saying things like:

Customer: “No, son, it’s a hundred pennies to a dollar. Round them into ten groups of ten.”

Me: “Would you prefer if I counted the coins for him?”

Customer: “No, this is how he learns about the real world.”

Next Customer: “She wasn’t asking you, she was asking us! Yes, we’d all very much prefer if you counted the coins for him!”

Customer: “How rude! If you had kids, you’d understand that—”

Next Customer: “—I have kids, and got them to learn coins and counting at home when it didn’t waste everyone else’s time! Now pay up now, or move aside so we can all get through the express lane! You know, the lane that’s supposed to be fast?!”

One of the parents, more embarrassed than the other, just swipes his card and moves his family along. I don’t know who looked more relieved, the next customer, me, or the poor kid!