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607 points andrewl | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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hrimfaxi ◴[] No.45901988[source]
I watched a video on the demise of the penny and its predicament was so succinctly explained: everyone gets pennies as change but few carry them around let alone spend them, so we are stuck producing ever more. One news outlet even did an "experiment" where they threw hundreds of pennies on the ground in a city on a busy morning and not one person stopped to pick any up.
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basscomm ◴[] No.45902153[source]
> everyone gets pennies as change but few carry them around let alone spend them

It's not just pennies, it's all coins. In a former life I worked in retail and almost nobody would fish around in their pockets for exact (or even near) change. They'd always hand me bills for their purchase even if they had just completed a transaction and had the coins in their pocket. That was in the 90's, and I still see it happening today, even though I'm no longer in the retail world.

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Retric ◴[] No.45902379[source]
I’d regularly use quarters in vending machines, but not waste time during a retail transaction.
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zahlman ◴[] No.45905766[source]
It's amazing to me that people consider "saving time while paying money" to be a good thing.

I will never "tap" my debit card as long as I have any legal option. Everyone else can wait for me to exercise my consumer rights, by inputting my PIN, verifying the amount displayed on screen etc.

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robocat ◴[] No.45907333{3}[source]
I've seen a pattern where people that value their own time at $0 unfortunately often value the time of others at $0. Worse is valuing others at $0 and your own at $lots (which is also common).
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1. zahlman ◴[] No.45909252{4}[source]
Interesting.

I don't know what to make of the idea that I'm "not valuing my time" by carefully considering my purchases and caring about security. Or that the seconds I take on this are so important to both myself and others, compared to the time spent browsing the store shelves, getting to and from the place, etc. Heaven forbid I choose the cashier instead of a self check-out this time, and try to strike up a conversation.