Give Me My Proper Change, Please

Human interaction plays out differently when one shops hereabouts.  Once, in a department store in Metro Manila, I heard a cashier asking a fellow cashier of the booth where I was lined up if she had 25 centavos.  There was a man she was serving who will not leave until he gets his full change which still lacks that amount, she said.  She topped her story with laughter and derision and this wry comment:  He must be a foreigner.  But let me backtrack a bit.

Over a decade ago, stores had this caveat in their receipts, “No Return, No Exchange.”  Worse, a certain chain of stores in Cebu City had guards man the entrances to their rest rooms to ensure that potential users had receipts of purchase before they were allowed to enter those rest rooms.  Other stores gave candies as change in lieu of centavos.

These are all behind us now, thanks to the active will of consumer protection groups under the auspices of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).  I heard they contributed much to doing away with these sordid impositions by merchants.  Added for good measure were local executives who knew how to enforce rules and could not be swayed by special interest groups when it came to fairness and propriety.

Yet these days there is still this one thing that irks:  the presumption by most store cashiers that customers will do away with loose change.  Such is my experience anywhere I buy something.  And it is more prevalent in bigger stores, not in those small neighborhood convenience stores, bless them.

Shopping is not much of a pleasant experience in this scenario: prices of goods are pegged with extra centavos, like PhP11.45, PhP45.95, or PhP99.50.  More often, when the total amount of purchase has a few extra pesos, say, PhP103.35, almost like a mantra the cashier never fails to ask if one has those extra pesos change, four pesos in this case as she is wont to round off the amount in favor of the store.

Fact is, a well-meaning cashier and well-run store should take  responsibility for the availability of change for their customers, down to the last centavo, no more, no less.  They should not pass on the burden to produce what they lack.  Worse comes when one gets a change of only 50 centavos, if ever, and not the .65 one expects, or ought to get. Why peg prices with extra centavos if a store is bereft of loose change to support them?

Let us play around with pedestrian math sans scientific research in this case.  Add female logic and imagination for good measure.  Grant that a big department store in a city has an average of 1,000 customers a day.

Presume too that maybe half of these buyers do not get their change of .25 on the average.  Disregard here the amount of change denied that could run from .05 to .85, and the reality that some customers may get more than their due change, like one peso instead of 85 centavos.

So let us just suppose that on a given day, only 250 buyers are denied the 25-centavo change due them.  That could easily mean over 22 thousand pesos a year of unreflected extra income, and an issue for the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).

As an ordinary buyer, it is of course not for me to say whether the money goes to the store owner or to the cashiers.

Back to that department store in Manila with those laughing cashiers; my turn for paying came and I declared:  I am not a foreigner but I need my exact change just as much.  Their smiles were transformed to dagger looks, I must have appeared as a Martian.

In a branch of a ubiquitous pharmacy chain in Cebu City, I was
given a change that was short of 50 centavos.  The cashier gave looks that could kill when I called her attention to it.  It seems that either asking for one’s due has become a crime or I am just an unreasonable nitpicker.  In any case, I did not budge.  Neither did she.

When it seemed that I have stood there for eternity and smiles were already thrown by other customers, she dramatically parted with one peso coupled with grumbles I could not make out.  The ball was in my court.  I did not have 50 centavos myself.  But there was a pre-school girl beside me holding on to her mother’s skirt and a little girl’s purse.  Asked how much she had, she showed me 75 centavos.  I offered five pesos in exchange.  She beamed.  Her mother smiled, amused.  I gave back .50 to the cashier and dropped my last words:  Next time learn to count!

Store cashiers are educated and trained and can strike back at an irate customer.  In one instance that customer was me.  Do you have…, she began, but I cut her short by saying that change is the store’s responsibility, not mine.  You can always say no, Ma’am, she shot back.  Touché!  It turned out that she had the change.  She just wanted to hold on to them for as long as she can.  For other more irate customers, I guess.  Thank heavens I am not alone in this business.

Once, I engaged a cashier in a Cebu City department store on a friendly chat when I noticed that there was no one after me as it was not a shopping rush hour.  Asked why they are not too keen on giving the exact change for the sake of fair play, she answered that they have repeatedly pointed out to management their serial lack of change and have asked for solutions but nothing has been done.  We are put on the spot between customers and management, she added.

You can suggest that the store provides for some sort of internal ‘bank’ for loose change, somewhere where management can safely keep a sufficient supply of coins and where all of you can easily go to have your bigger denominations changed, like the gift-wrapping counter, I volunteered.  She answered with a sigh of gloom, and doom.

One need not be a penny-pinching shopper to hope for honest-to-goodness exact change on one’s purchases.  While a peso is not a peso without those centavos, the point is not really the value of those humble centavos that gets lower by the day anyway.  Beyond that, one cannot be blamed for equating the proper giving of exact change with the politeness of a store’s staff, which in turn reflects its management.

By the way, except for some taxi drivers who are strangely loathe to having loose change and are quite ready to declare that they lack it most of the time, drivers of public utility vehicles— jeepneys, buses and pedicabs,  are more efficient at giving back one’s exact loose change.

(Sept 2004)