So there’s a coin shortage. We were not spending in stores until recently, so that interrupted the supply chain by which coins flowed through the commercial merry-go-round, and now there is little to go around.
Just a day or two before the announcement about the coin shortage came, I had taken some $40 worth to one of those big green counting machines (you know, the brand whose name reminds you of the solar system). With my coins I got a voucher for Amazon, because everybody shops at Amazon, and I’ve also been pulled into its web of plenty.
Coins used to be more than just weight in your purse or pocket. In the old days, people counted their coins, wrapped them up in specified rolls and took them to the bank for deposit or paper currency. That hobby seems to have vanished and now is as rare as the coins.
For awhile, nickels were the hardest to find, but now I seem to have as many of them as quarters. Unfortunately I have no pennies right now, and if any coin has an image problem, that’s the one. Sales and income taxes force us to deal with pennies more than we would like, and we never are happy with how many pennies we have to pay. One or two cents, either paid out or received in change, seems to cause discontent. There is always too many of one or too few of the other.
The obvious solution would be to round sales figures up or down: down for one or two cents, and up for three or four cents. Pennies should go into charity or fundraiser jars, or thrown into fountains.
Recently I found I had a considerable amount of change, so I’ve been giving exact change while shopping. Nobody seems to mind if I take a moment to prevent them having to give me coins back, and it puts the change back into circulation.
Speaking of circulation, I’ve gotten some more exercise recently, now that the weather has cooperated. So far, everybody I’ve seen has worn a mask and respected personal space, so shopping has returned to my repertoire.
That, and using up dollar bills I’ve gotten instead of coins, because I’ve been using exact change there, too.
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