Saturday, October 21, 2017

One Single Bill


I am writing this blog entry after having what I consider to be the oddest interaction with a cashier that I can ever remember. And I’ve been interacting with cashiers for the better part of 40 years, so that’s saying something.

I went to my local Fry’s to purchase two staples of the Schwartzberg household—ranch dressing and waffles. And no, we don’t use them in the same meal…usually. In any event, with my two items in hand I went to the express checkout line and waited behind a guy buying hot dogs and chili, thankful that I wouldn’t be having dinner with him tonight.

When it was my turn in line I swiped my debit card and requested $40 cash back. I said to the guy behind the counter—a young man in his early twenties—“Could I get 20 of the 40 back in smaller bills—like a ten, a five and five singles?”

“Okay,” he said. Then he looked into his cash drawer and seemed flummoxed. Apparently he was out of twenties, so he slowly gave me two tens, but then he didn’t seem sure what to do next.

“Just a ten, a five and five singles is fine,” I said, hoping this would spur him into action. He then counted out four fives and put them on top of the two tens. I could see in his cash drawer he had plenty of singles, so I wasn’t sure what the problem was.

“Could I get five singles as part of this?” I asked. He then took two of the fives, put them next to him and looked sort of helplessly into his drawer. I reached over the counter, took one of the fives back and said, “Can I get five singles now?”

“What are singles?” He asked. Now I was the one who was flummoxed.

“Singles…um, you know…ones,” I said. I spoke these words slowly and haltingly, and looked around as I did so, because I wasn’t sure if I was perhaps on some sort of hidden camera show that would end up on YouTube later on today.

“Oh, okay,” the guy said and started counting out five ones.

“Have you not heard the term ‘singles’ before?” I asked him, because I just had to know.

“No, I never have. Next time call them ones,” he said.

“Uh, okay. I sure will,” I said taking my money and my grocery bag and walking away.

I wasn’t sure what had just transpired. My first thought was, how can a guy working as a cashier in a grocery store not know that singles are ones? (Let’s forget for a second the fact that even if he had never heard the term before, you would think given the context and the fact that I was asking for five of them, he could have figured it out on his own.) My next thought was that maybe this is one of those regional things and is only common on the East Coast. Sort of like how I refer to soda as soda, but people from other parts of the country ridiculously refer to it as pop.

But the truth is, I’ve lived in Arizona for 22 years and have always said, “Can I have a ten, a five, and five singles,” when getting cash back and not once has it stopped any cashier at any store from giving me the correct breakdown of bills.

Perhaps “singles” is an antiquated term. I’m easily more than twice the age of the cashier and maybe the term “singles” referring to one dollar bills is simply not one his generation uses. Sort of like when I told one of the Millennials I work with, “I thrice tried on the dungarees, but it made me look like a nincompoop, so I told the shopkeep I’d return in a fortnight,” and they looked at me with a blank expression.

So now I appeal to the people of the internet to explain what happened to me this afternoon. Do YOU use the word “singles” when referring to one dollar bills? Am I crazy? Was the cashier? Or was this simply a YouTube prank that’s going to go viral in the next 48 hours?