In paying for £20.65 worth of food from a cafe with a £20 and a £10 note.

[islandofsodor]

We went out for the day over half term and struggled to find enough change for the all day car park so had to raid the dc's pocket money. I had £50 in my purse, two twenties and a ten.

We then went to a fish & chip cafe (didn't take cards), we all had meals and a drink and it came to £20.65. I handed over £30 and the assistant asked me for the 65p. I said I'm sorry that's all I've got, I can give you the 5p but not the 60p. I need 65p, she said. Sorry, I said I have no other change, thats all I've got.

Well I need the 65p, you can't pay for 65p with a ten pound note.

Another assistant came over to see what was up. She is trying to pay for 65p with a £10 note the till assistant. said.

Well thats all I've got I said. (though I felt like saying, no I'm bloody not I'm paying for over £20 worth of food here).

Begrudgingly she gave me the change. I had actually considered paying with the two twenties as I needed change but thought no I won't.

This was 12.15 noon at the start of lunchtime in a very busy cafe in a busy resort during half-term.

YANBU. They should have enough cash float to handle change for their customers.

YANBU and I bet they've put you off going back.

yanbu

how silly of cafe

next time say to them if they dont have the change, then they have to give you the food for £20

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YANBU
It happens to me every time I use our local Coop.
I normally get the money from the cash machine outside the shop on the way home from work. I then go in and buy stuff like bread or milk.
There is one cashier who always asks me "Haven't you got anything smaller?"
It drives me mad. I say no and then she huffs and puffs as if I am the biggest pain in the arse in the world.
I have a huge collection of pennies at home that I am so tempted to take in and dump on her counter the next time I go in.
Wonder if that would stop her?

How daft of them. In this situation I usually apologise that I only have a £10/£20 etc but I would expect them to be nice about it in return - they run a cafe ffs!

Just make sure you've always got some stamps in your purse, afterall they are legal tender

YANBU, they could've taken the £20 and waived the 65p if they were that bothered

YANBU for trying to pay this amount with a £20 +£10. This is a perfectly reasonable amount for them to have to change. You should work where I do. People regularly ask for something costing 10p which they do not really need and proffer a £20 note just so they can get change for buses/parking meters etc. This really is annoying.

how did she expect you to leave a tip with no other change??

bet you didn't leave a tip

Oh my God! You were trying to pay for your lunch? With money? What a cheek

People working in shops sometimes seem to forget that without customers, they wouldn't have a job, and customer service goes out of the window.

As people pay less and less with cash, they often only have larger notes that have been drawn out of a cash machine. If shops don't have enough change in their float that's their problem, not yours.

Oh this drives me nuts, places where they look at you like you're robbing them for expecting to use their change.

It happened to me in my work cafeteria last week. I had the temerity to try to pay for my lunch with a £10 (was £5.67 or similar). The assistant peered into my purse and said "you've got a fiver there". Yes, I said but I don't think I've got the rest in change. Huff, puff, huff, puff was the response so I dug out all my change and counted it out which indeed came to about 20p short of the required amount so she finally gave me the change from the £10.

And everyone else in the queue was just delighted.

Not very good customer service, if that's all you had she should have swallowed her irritation. Even though I can see it was a pain from her point of view.

YANBU.

Nothing wrong with that. Not as bad as the customer I served last week who paid for a 57p item with a £50 note! and for some obscure reason our company policy is - no £20 notes in till at any* time, no more than 2 £10 and no more than 4 £5. We can have as much £1, and £2 coins as we like though

In case someone reaches over and grabs the notes, Saltire. Same policy when I worked in a shop. Hard to grab much change in one quick move, but if you've got 40 x £20 notes in there, they could easily grab it and that's er.... a lot of money (£800 I think!).

Oh, and OP YANBU. Don't you just love British service?

Hmm, well someone needs to tell M&S that then, when I was in there the other day the till operator who served me had at least 20 £20s and about the same amount of £10s in her till! I thought at the time "we'd never get away with that much money in our tills"

When I worked in a shop we were allowed 2x£20 to make change for a £50 (we seemed to get them all the time) but any more had to go straight into the CounterCache.

They did random till checks and you'd have got bollocked for having piles of £20s in the till.

yanbu if they were that bothered they should have given you it for £20

Glad I was NBU. Oddly enough she has originally told me £18 something but I poited out tht she had forgotten to put ds's meal (which was being cooked to order) on the bill.

The fish and chips were lovely though and we go there every year. Man who served us the food was lovely so it was just the one assistant obviously having an off day.

It is true what cakeywakey says. We use cash so little these days that when we do have to we go though the cashpoint specially.

I do know loads of places that won't accept £50 notes due to the high level of forgeries and I can see their point but this was silly!

It never seems to bother me, infact the first time I asked for smaller change was when someone tried to pay for some that was £20.15 with 2 £20 notes.
It really gets on my boss' goat though, he is obsessed, he is always on about the till float and how we need to ask for the right money because we are low on £1 coins or something, he forgets that I am usually the one who counts the safe float and know for a fact we have about £400 worth of coins waiting to be used.
So glad im on maternity leave now!

I was on the bus once, and had just been to the cashpoint so had to pay for my fare with a $20 note (fare was $2.60) and the driver said "I don't have change for that, have you got anything smaller?".

So I just said brightly "no, but that's ok, I'll just sit up there and you can let me know when you have enough change".

And he looked at me slightly dumbfounded, but my opinion was, I had offered the money for the service, it wasn't my fault he didn't have any change.

Im sure it was in Edinburgh where you must have the correct fare ready before you board - change not given if you only had a note.

In Preston it is the same-you put your money in a little slot and the driver has no access to it. I used to just get weekly passes to make life easier.

The metro in Newcastle is pretty annoying - the machines don't take notes, so you have to have coins. They do give change though.