The entry yesterday sparked a few reader comments that just reinforced my opinion. One person wrote and told me about the small businesses in her town who, if your purchase is a few pennies short of a dollar, simply don't give you the pennies as a matter of course, and don't even remark on it.

I woke up this morning thinking about this (yes, I realize that's dumb, but these are the kinds of things I think about). Say I stop at the same coffee shop every morning on the way to work for a cup of coffee. My coffee costs $.98, I pay with a dollar bill, and they keep the pennies. So for the sake of round numbers, let's say that adds up to $5.00 a year. Not a big deal, right?

But (and I have absolutely no idea how many customers walk through any given door in a day, I'm saying that up front) say they have 200 customers a day. That two cents per customer per day adds up to $1,000--probably still not a big deal to a business, but when you think about it in those terms you (or at least I) begin to wonder how they can justify keeping their customers' money, even if it is only a few pennies each.

This is the kind of thing that drives me crazy.

Someone else wrote and told me about going into an office supply store where they were offering reams of paper "buy two, get one free," and when she got up to the counter, was told that they would have to charge her a penny for the free one because they had no procedure for giving something free.

She did exactly what I would have done--told them no, that they were advertising it for free, and she wanted it for free. The cashier complained that she couldn't do anything about it, and the manager wasn't there (having been rushed to the hospital that morning--probably after having been beaten by a frustrated customer, would be my guess), the customers in the back of the line started grumbling, and she ended up paying the penny and feeling that she had been made to feel guilty for wanting the store to honor their advertising.

If they couldn't handle a free item, why didn't they just make it "buy two, get one for a penny?"

And as for holding up the line, yeah, I've experienced that. I don't worry about it, though. I figure that's the store's problem. I do realize, though, that most people in line don't feel that way. Bob would be one of them. He's come home more than a few times saying that he's been in line behind someone who's complaining about a few cents difference in price, and his inclination (although I don't think he's ever actually done it) is to pull a dollar out of his wallet and say, "Here's a dollar--can we get on with our lives now?"

It's not the pennies, it's not the dollar, it's the principle of the thing. I suppose I should get over it, and it's not like I worry about it all the time--in fact, I had completely forgotten about the bagel shop incident until later that night when I stopped at the grocery store on the way home and bought $52.02 worth of groceries and only had one penny. I suppose I could have said to the clerk, "I only have one penny, is that okay?"

I didn't, though. I paid with $53.00 and got back ninety-eight cents in change.