I used to work retail and one year on Black Friday, with a long line of eager customers, a family tried to purchase a laptop computer using only a bag of change. At first I thought they were joking… They were kind enough to offer to count it for me…
I hope you all had a safe and happy Thanksgiving and Black Friday!
Please continue to spread the word about POV Comic by clicking the like/+1/share buttons!
Needless to say, that was probably somewhat symbolic for the kids in that family. The whole family probably had to save every bit of change they could for quite awhile, and although it was inconvenient for you, the company that you worked for was paid in full for that computer on the spot, with no concerns for a bounced check or bad credit card.
Retail stores have very good check auditing services and credit card transactions (if they go through at the register) are guaranteed by the bank… so credit/debit transactions are actually just as good as cash (save the fee associated with using the card). The 45 minutes or so it would have taken for me and another employee to count all that change (that’s a lot of time on the busiest shopping day of the year) would have been detrimental to the store and to the rest of the anxious customers in line. So, no. It WOULD have meant a lot to those kids if they had gotten the item they saved up for… Maybe next time daddy will take them to a Coinstar machine and they’ll get the item they worked so hard to save for…
The story has a happy ending though… The next customer that walked up the counter really wanted the laptop they had tried to purchase – so happens one had JUST become available!