Recently I hired a professional cleaning company to clean my home. We agreed on the price of $79. They only take cash.
So they came and cleaned and then it was time for them to get paid and leave. I handed them a $100 bill expecting $21 in change back. They said they don’t have any change at all. I only had a $100 and a $50 so I could either overpay them by $21 or underpay them by $29. They didn’t do a particularly good job at cleaning so I didn’t want to leave a $21 tip this time.
Eventually I found some coins and managed to pay them $73 and they left angrily.
It seems to me like if your business only accepts cash then you ought to have change. Yet they acted like it is my responsibility to have exact change. Which is it?
In this particular case, given they (1) knew in advance that they were going to make a transaction, (2) knew what the amount of the transaction was, (3) didn’t set an amount which was a round figure, and (4) insisted on it being in cash, then yeah, it was very very much on them. To the point where them not having change was pretty much a deliberate ripoff attempt.
Of course, setting the price at $79 was absolutely also a way of trying to make customers think “Oh, I really should have gotten $80 in cash ready instead of $100, silly me, that’s totally on me, don’t want to cause a fuss over $20, I’ll know better next time.”