I have a useless item in my purse. Some of you may be laughing and nodding your heads knowingly, because most of us ladies have stuff in our purses we’d like to ditch but can’t do without, but this is a bit of a puzzler.
You see, a clerk at the grocer gave me some change a few weeks ago, and when I got home and took the change out of my pockets, I realized I was given what looked like a bus token. I wasn’t mad: tokens get bus rides on SEPTA when I go to Philadelphia. This didn’t quite look like one of those, though, so I examined it more closely. Maybe it was an arcade token, in which case I would have felt really ripped off. Turns out the enterprising doofus had slipped me a Euro coin.
Dutifully I took it to the bank and handed it to the lady behind the counter, who eyed it as if it had mold spores on it. They couldn’t do anything with it, she said: even a woman at the customer service desk added her two cents (pun intended), saying they didn’t deal with foreign currency. But it’s in use in a ton of foreign countries, I argued: surely it is worth something here. Go to a federal bank, they said.
Somebody told me the coin is probably worth about three to four times what a quarter would have been. As soon as I can get to a federal bank with hours during which I can actually go there, I’ll let you know if I can get rid of the thing. One thing certain: if it is worth more than a quarter, I certainly won’t pawn it off on somebody else. I want the “interest” for pain and suffering, since it (unlike American Express) is not accepted everywhere.
Susan's Scribblings the Blog 