Incorrect Change

Count Your Change!

For lunch today, I joined my fellow co-workers on an outing to McDonald's. Yes, I know, this is not the most fiscally responsible (or healthy) lunch but that fact is not the purpose of this post.

I ordered three dollar-menu items, bringing my total to 3.18. I paid with a 5 dollar bill, which should net me 1.82 in change. This particular McDonald's utilizes the automatic change dispenser. Until today, I've typically trusted these things to correctly dispense change but now I'm not so sure. I received only 57 cents! I did notice the change was incorrect, but my on-the-spot math wasn't "on" (and I was really hungry and just wanted to get out of there), so I thought I was shorted a nickle and said as much. A roll of the eyes from the cashier and a nickle later I was walking away when I realized my mistake. I didn't go back for the remaining 20 cents, as that was my calculation error -- but I've made a mental note to ALWAYS count my change. It's only 25 cents, but if they're shorting even 10 people a day, that's $2.50 per day that McD's is essentially stealing from those customers! My personal guess is that more than that is incorrectly dispensed, and I would further guess that these machines are more likely to give out too little change before they'd give out too much.

Just a heads up, count your change. Last month I was missing around 3 dollars, that I can only surmise was from "missing" change, as I track every monetary transaction.