Maybe we can just settle for talking about MUDs and not try to have debates. :tongue:


Every paragraph break you omitted will cost you twenty lashes, payable with interest. :evil:


Same problem. Keys, phone, wallet, pass card if work day… just too much stuff and it starts getting kind of unsightly.

We have plenty mud discussion, but mud discussions rarely result in a long thread without tempers flaring up. I figured an innocent subject like this would lighten the mood of the forum and allow for a good bit of conversation.


Hmm what kind of lashes? Eye lashes? I've never plucked an eye lash before but I think it hurts. And do I have to yank all 20 of them at the same time or can I do them one at a time.


You can remove the key problem if you get a carabiner and hang your keys from your belt loop. Though that can be a bit annoying if you have a ton of keys on there cause every time you take a step they clink. But if you just have house and car keys on there it isn't too bad.

A man-bag is the answer to your pocket related problems.

I have a man-bag but I keep my testicles in it and there's not much room for anything else in there. Besides, how am I going to get my keys in there without severe pain?

I don't live in america, I live in Britain, but I can't believe that in America there is some rule which says you can't pay for things using change. :surprised:

What I do in shops is to try to hand over an amount of money which is as close as I can manage to the cost of what I'm buying. Let's say I start off with a £5 note and nothing else. I go into a shop and buy a packet of crisps (simultaneous translation for our american viewers: some chips). That costs 55p. So I hand over my £5 note, and I get four £1 coins, two 20p coins and a 5p coin in change. Later in the day I fancy another packet of crisps, so I go into another shop. What you seem to be suggesting is that the only way I can pay for my second packet is to pay with another £5 note (or something even larger). But why would I do that when I've got four £1 coins in my pocket? Instead, I'll hand over a £1 coin and a 5p coin, and get a single 50p coin in change. Later that day, maybe I'll need a newspaper - that costs 50p, so I hand over the 50p for it and require no change. Later I might want to buy a box of strawberries on the way home - that costs £2.20, so I'll hand over two pound coins and a 20p coin. And so on - each time I want to buy something which costs less than £5, the only time I'll actually use a £5 note to buy it is if I don't have enough change available to make up the total.

Doing this means I never accumulate more than a few coins at a time, and it is simply inaccurate to suggest that the amount of change you have increases with each transaction - that's only the case if you insist on paying with paper money each time, and I fail to see why anyone would do that.

What's more, paying in change seems to me to be a more considerate way to behave. :smile: I buy quite a lot of my groceries at a weekly farmers' market, and the stall-holders there have a real problem with getting hold of enough change to keep on serving people. If everyone adopted your approach then the entire market would pretty much grind to a halt in the first hour (or, at the very least, the stallholders would have to carry a lot more change and go to the bank more often to get more.) Taking a few seconds to work out the cost of one's purchase and getting an almost-correct amount of money ready makes their lives a great deal easier. Insisting on paying for absolutely everything with a large denomination note, by contrast, seems positively antisocial. :sad:

Maybe it's a cultural thing, I don't know.

Edit: hmph, this forum script doesn't like UK currency symbols! :mad:

Edit 2: Even in a case where a shopkeeper has plenty of change in the till, it still seems only polite to make him count out as few coins as possible when he's handing me my change. If I hand over a £5 note when what I'm buying costs £1.01, then he has to count out a total of nine coins (three pound-coins, a 50p, two 20p's, a 5p, and two 2p's). If I give him a £5 note and a penny, then he only has to count out four coins. It's quite normal for a British shopkeeper in that situation to ask "do you have the penny?" To me, not bothering to give him the extra penny even if I have it is an example of being lazy and expecting other people to do work which is actually your own responsibility. :smile: It's selfish in the same way as not bothering to use accurate spelling and grammar is selfish.

If you make several small transactions a day, it's easier to use cash. In my case, though, I almost always make one transaction per day: lunch. If I make another transaction, it's likely to be large enough that I probably wouldn't pay in cash, or it would be rounded to the dollar. So, this means moving change across days, which means remembering, etc.

Incidentally, there comes a point where plastic is faster than cash if people are counting out exact change, especially now that many stores are no longer requiring signatures for transactions below $15. (This is not necessarily an option at the farmer's market, I realize.) So, there are times where it is in fact less considerate to pay in cash than with plastic, depending on what you're doing. :wink:

Don't go to college. Trust me.



@David: Signatures below $15 are a good thing. Where I live, credit card fraud is a staple of every day living for scum. Sure, it's only $15, but there's more than enough #$%^head business owners who don't care if there's multiple $15 purchases made in a row, even if it's illegal. As long as they get their cut.

Ok, I see your point, but like you stated it is a cultural difference. I don't think customers have ever once thought about trying to figure out closest change possible to buy something. The only way I would give an extra penny or add change to a dollar would be to get a rounded number back. As for your example, if something is $1.07 then if I only had a $5 bill then I would give $5 and 7 cents IF I had that change on me so I could get 4 $1 bills back and maybe some change.

I don't believe Americans try to help the store owner by giving correct change. America is full of big grocery store chains and pretty much have the money on a daily basis every day for every situation. That's not to say we are worse off or that we are better, but that's just kinda how it is.

America is all about RUSH RUSH RUSH, get in, get out, get going. When I was in Australia I loved the fact that they could really care less about time. They had a ton more small shops without big store chains. I used currency pretty much exclusively there and I guess I did try to manage it better (although they do have 1 and 2 dollar coins) with how you propose.

My original comment was more toward your thinking it crazy to save coins, whereas I just hate to use them/have them. I guess it is lazy american mentality, but now I just swipe my card and be done with it. Online banking is for checking your account. heh.

If you have a half-decent credit card company, you are not terribly vulnerable to fraud – you simply contact the company and inform them that the transaction was fraudulent. The store has no proof you actually made the purchase, or that you actually authorized it, and that's that. In a sense, the storekeepers are the ones putting themselves at risk by not requiring signatures, not customers.

This is one reason why I'm a little mystified that the US is so slow to move to PIN-based card transactions. It's very fast, and (usually) more secure for both the vendor and the consumer. Oh well.

It would piss me off and I'd move to another country.

Quixadhal, roll horde on Daggerspine. Or Alliance there, I have both. Or on Kil'Jaeden or Detheroc. :p

And what about when you go out to the pub for a few pints? Do you really dig out your coins each time you buy a round? Back when I was young and single I'd quite often go out drinking in the evenings, and the next morning I'd usually find myself with a pocket full of coins proportional to the size of my hangover.

It just wasn't practical to start counting out coins in a crowded pub when I was already drunk, and the next morning I'd sometimes have so many coins that they'd drag my jeans down on one side. So I'd just dump most of the smaller denominations on a nearby surface - where they would usually gather dust. I'd end up with little piles of coins everywhere.

When I moved from the UK I gathered all the coins up and took them to the bank. There was over £100 worth - and that was just the smaller denominations (I'd always keep the £1 and £2 coins, as well as most of the 50p and 20p coins). I'm not the only person who does this either - when visiting friends back in the UK I usually notice small piles of coins scattered around their apartments.



For the shopkeeper perhaps, but not for the people behind you in the queue. It drives me nuts when I'm waiting to pay, and the person in front of me is digging around in their purse/wallet for the exact change. Actually I often see the shopkeeper getting impatient as well…although I imagine it's a bit different if you're buying stuff from the market, as they don't tend to have access to the large amounts of change that a normal shop has.

I do try to pay with the right change if I know in advance exactly how much something is going to cost, or if I've got enough loose change in my hand that I can quickly hand over the right amount, but I try not to hold up the queue. More often I'll hand over a note and a coin or two, to help the shopkeeper round up the change.

New York solves that problem by rounding all drink prices up to $5 or $6. :wink: If you pay every time, you end up with a lot of $1's, but those are less annoying than a bunch of small coins.

Well, debit purchases (not credit) you have to use a PIN. But some banks charge if you use a debit transaction rather than credit, though their function is identical as far as I know. I know that when I used a debit card, I would never be asked for ID, but if I chose to ring a purchase up as using a credit card, I would be IDd usually.

Many cards can pretend to be debit or credit, whereas many cards (or card readers) in Europe (or at least France) will refuse to go to signature mode without a number of manual overrides.


This is ridiculous and one of the things that I find astonishing.


Credit and debit cards often behave differently as far as the bank is concerned; for instance, debit transactions tend to be instant whereas credit transactions are delayed for a few days.

Don't get me started on this. This was quite possibly one of the most annoying things I found from living in Poland. Giving the correct change in shops is like a national obsession for them. I once even paid for goods totalling 9.97 with a 10 zl note and the cashier still asked me for change (0.03 zl ~ $0.01).

Far from collecting too much small change, I always had to ensure I had enough when I went shopping. The smallest note you could get from an ATM was a 50 so you always had to withdraw cash 50 at a time so as not to get stuck with a 100 note which you couldn't spend anywhere. Shopkeepers in the UK might grumble a bit if you give them a note for a small value item but I've never known anyone refuse to take it like they would in Poland.

RFID Chips are the answer.

LOL, already have more characters than I know what to do with. :)

I have horde on Spinebreaker, back when PvP wasn't pure ganking (yes, I played before battlegrounds existed).
As it stands, I already(!) have three groups of people I *try* to play with on occasion, on Durotan, Nazgrel, and a couple of fools on Earthen Ring for some reason.

I also play EVE-Online, one server cluster, easy to find people.

As long as they don't get hacked, I agree. :)

Otherwise, I'd hate to be browsing around Best Buy and have the door scanner claim that I was carrying 20 60" plasma screens, 50 copies of Photoshop, and an energy drink.

I know man, I wouldn't want to be caught with one of THOSE…

I think I know where your astonishment is coming from now shas. In America we do have $1 coins, but they are not commonly used, neither are our 50 cent pieces. Most people rarely even SEE any coin larger than 25 cents.