MY TWO CENTS

IT HAS happened to me and I am sure it has happened to you – you go into a parlour, grocery, or fast food outlet where the price of your item is not a flat number, but say something like $5.99. You hand the cashier $6 upon which the cashier says casually they don’t have any one cent pieces in the register. Chances are you don’t particularly mind – after all, one cent is not considered a lot of money. You can’t buy anything with one cent, and most people put anything under twenty five cents in the collection tins for the TTSPCA or homeless shelters. The average person would not look twice at a one cent piece lying on the ground or stop to pick it up.

Many even leave the one cent change on the counter of the store in which they have just made their purchase! One cent by itself is not a lot of money and has no buying power, but if someone picked up every loose one cent in Trinidad and Tobago, I’m sure they’d have a good few bucks in their pocket, for free. Last week I took my sister to the airport as she was going to Tobago for the long Easter weekend. We were looking for some lunch, but since there are virtually no restaurants with semi-healthy meals in our glorious “world class” Piarco International Airport, we naturally opted to buy some good old reliable greasy deep-fried fast food. 

I went into the line behind a number of people and overheard the two cashiers repeat like a broken record, “I’m sorry, we have no one cent pieces right now,” to which the customers all shrugged, took their food and went on their hungry way. However, one gentleman said, “What do you mean you don’t have any one cent pieces? I want my change.” The cashier looked ruffled. “I’m sorry sir but we don’t have any one cents in the cash register at this time…” she again explained, but the man did not give in. “Call the manager,” he said. The cashier watched him like he was mad. “But it’s just one cent!” she said in disbelief. “Listen,” he replied, “I don’t care if it’s one cent or fifty cents, that’s my change that you are withholding from me. Call the manager.”

Needless to say, the cashier managed to find the one cent to give to the disgruntled customer without having to call the manager. But it made me wonder – how much money does a fast food outlet, or any store for that matter, make by telling us happy-go-lucky, easy-going don’t-study-it Trinis that they just don’t have the one cent to give them? While of course it is not official company policy, the “no-one-cents” line is given all over our island, and since I’ve never, ever had it happen to me in any other country in the world, I chalk it up to a “Trini Thing.” In fact, I think store owners know perfectly well that the average person in a rush is not studying the loss of one cent and store owners take full advantage of this fact.

If we go into a store and buy something for $19.99 and the cashier tells us she doesn’t have the one cent, generally we all tend to not worry about it, and think to ourselves, “Well, it’s just one cent… who cares?” Indeed, one cent does not make a big dent on our wallets, but does it make a bulge in the pockets of the people withholding that one cent from customers? Let’s use fast food outlets as a prime example, since they are particularly notorious for using the “no-one-cents” line. There are hundreds of fast food outlets all over Trinidad and Tobago. The busiest ones, I’ve heard, are the ones in downtown Port-of-Spain.

Let’s make a rough guess that on a busy day, an outlet can make 5,000 sales (or more maybe, I do not know the statistics, but at the rate that Trinis like their fried food it could very well be twice that amount). The majority of their meals are sold not at a flat figure, but with 99 or 95 cents. If they keep that one cent in change from each customer, that could translate to $500 they make extra per day. Multiply that $500 by 365 days a year, and an outlet could potentially take home $182,500 a year simply by telling their customers they don’t have any one cents in the register. Multiply that figure by the the number of outlets all over this country (of course, not all do as well as the downtown ones) and a fast food company could well be raking in over a million extra dollars that their establishment makes by not giving you your puny, inconsequential, scrunting, measly little one cent change!

This is not just a theory – some businesses have actually recorded how much money they make by collecting “lost” change. For example, thanks to the barrage of random information floating around on the Internet, I found out an interesting fact (although on the Internet, who knows the accuracy of figures or sources) that Virgin Airlines finds approximately 18 cents of loose change per passenger found wedged in the airline’s seats a year. Virgin Airlines carries roughly 300 million people per year, so the total amount of money made from discarded coins adds up to a whopping US$58 million a year. Not bad huh! When you look at those figures you realise that every coin, no matter how small, does indeed have purchasing power and is not to be carelessly discarded.

Plus, why should we accept it unquestioningly when an establishment refuses us our change, when if we tried to purchase something and were wenty five cents short they would refuse to sell you the item? It’s more than just one cent in your pocket – it’s the principle of the matter that you, as a customer, have consumer rights, and one of those rights is getting your correct and exact change, no matter how small. So ask for your proper change back – it’s yours!