The “Do You Have a Smaller Bill?” Predicament

It is not advisable to compare countries with each other, but I daresay that only here in the Philippines is where you have the highest possibility of experiencing what I tend to call the “Do you have a smaller bill?” predicament.

I cannot leave my house without worrying if I have enough smaller bills to get me to work. I commute, you see; therefore, I pay my way to work, and the fad that has dominated the entire metro is the strangely abundant demand  of cashiers for smaller bills. If this is the case, I think it makes printing larger bills pointless because the main purpose of printing those in the first place is for convenience, and not the other way around. Needless to say, it is very inconvenient to keep a ridiculously large number of smaller bills in a wallet, making it abysmally deformed, just because we are all missing the point of the larger bills.

During my daily commute, I would be asked this very question more than thrice. Sometimes, cashiers would even throw me a dirty look if he or she was forced to cough up a lot of pieces of money to provide me with my change, like I were some sort of criminal or perhaps a plague. I think it’s the responsibility of a certain establishment to provide its customers with the appropriate service, regardless if he or she does or doesn’t have smaller bills.

Sometimes, I think business owners reckon that giving out a lot of pieces of money as change is already losing them exactly that amount. However, I think this is not a good practice. For one, some establishments have refused service just because they do not want to give out lots of pieces of money for change. The worse part of it is that sometimes, these very establishments are more than capable of providing change, but they choose to refuse their customers service simply because they deem it more practical. I can only imagine what would happen if there is an emergency and the people involved do not have smaller bills. Would real people in need be denied service still?

To these establishments, I implore you not to make this a trend and regard as a norm. The inconvenience that you may experience with providing your early customers your stock of smaller bills as change is, at most times, not as inconvenient as being denied service. Let us make our world a bit more convenient to live in.

Accept large bills.