I guess this is a little related to our hobby since it is about our circulating coinage. I have been wondering what the flow is through our marketplace when it comes to coins used as change today. Here's my question. Do retail stores have a positive or negative flow of coins? In other words, Do they have to deposit excess change they take in regularly or do they have a negative flow where they have to buy coins somewhere to make change for their customers? Any Walmart or McDonald employees here that may know?
Given that retail stores order change from banks, who order from the Federal Reserve system, who orders from the Mint. I have to say their coin flow is negative. More customers require change from their purchase when paying with currency than offer exact change. Ever try offering a store cashier coins along with currency in payment to make the change back come out even? Some are really baffled by that. :mouth:
In my experiance, we were always ordering coin from the bank. Never did we ever have to deposit any.....
At the McDonalds that I work at, we do not need that much change to thrive. We use mostly quarters and pennies for the change so we typically require just a box of pennies and box of quarters once per month.
It is normal for most stores to have a negative coin flow. This is mostly due to people that refuse to use small change. Think about it. If your in line in a grocery store and someone wants to pay with exact change, everyone behind in line looks like they want to shoot that person. And many, many know this so when the bill is $38.43 they always hand the cashier something like 2 twenties or some ten spots. Bill type currency except for that lady with the check book and she waits for the total to even start to fill it out. I suspect men are the worst about using exact change anywhere. This would explain why most stores have that negative coin problem. There is one store I go to and I don't know how many times early in the morning they are already asking for change from people.
"Think about it. If your in line in a grocery store and someone wants to pay with exact change, everyone behind in line looks like they want to shoot that person." .......just carl, with me i have this feeling when i see someone using their cell phone and holding up the line!
I actually have a large amount of customers who pay with exact change or give me a couple cents so they don't get any back. We flood customers with nickels though, because my company has done away with ordering dimes.
I used to work at a grocery store and I would constantly be calling for additional rolls of coins as they ran out through the day. I am one of those people that use up the change in my pocket so that I get less change in return. I also use a credit card whenever possible so that no change is required.
