From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Fri Jul 19 2002 - 01:33:58 MDT
Amara Graps:
>What about deleting the change-counting part and giving/showing a
>handful of coins to the cashier for her/him to extract the proper amount?
>Here is a situation I've seen many dozens of times in the past months in
>different countries with the new euro currency. It's a level of trust I
>have not seen before and I don't think that this situation happens only
>in the person's local neighborhood shop.
Alfio Puglisi:
>I've seen it all the time, before and after euro. In my city there are a
>lot of tourists, and most of them are not familiar with Euros now, and
>lire before. They just fill they hands with coins and let the cashier
>pick up the right ones, accepting back any change without counting.
>Happens at little shops and supermarkets too, and sometimes with big
>notes (10-20-50 euro) as well. I never saw a cashier taking advantage of
>it.
Harvey Newstrom :
>But seriously, I hesitate to call this "trust". These people are
>obviously doing this because they are incapable of counting out the new
>Euros.
"Incapable" is a bit strong. Put yourself in that person's shoes. You
are trying to bag your purchases at the same time as finding the proper
coins and you have only seconds to succeed at that action. If you feel
and trust that you won't be ripped off, then you seek help from the
cashier.
>How many people used to hand their wallet to the cashier to count
>out the right amount of money sight unseen before the Euro was
>implemented?
Alfio's experience stems more from his observing tourists, who have
trouble with whatever currency was/is used. I don't have as much contact
with the large number of tourists in Heidelberg, so I observed local
people (in Germany plus the other countries: Italy, France, Spain,
Portugal I've traveled through the last months). I observed this before
the Euro, but with the older pensioners. Since the Euro, it's occurring
often, in many places in the EU.
>The sad fact is, this isn't trust. This is helplessness.
I disagree, and I would not be sad. I think that this points to
a different mindset. I.e. a sense, that in the spur of the
moment, that you can trust the person at the other end of
the purchasing counter.
>These people are unable to control what is going on, so they just give
>up and let other people make all the decisions for them. I am all for
>"trust", but am against this form of helplessness. They are not the same
>concept at all.
In time, the number of locals fumbling over the Euro will decrease but
in the meantime, I was pleasantly surprised to see that folks from all
walks of life trusted the person at the cashier, so much to engage them
in their cash transaction.
As a side note, if you travel to the Euro zone, you will see an
inordinate amount of attention paid to the Euro, regardless of getting
accustomed to the value of the coins/bills. The country's backside of
the Euro has spawned coin collectors, collecting euros from different
countries. For example, the German shopkeepers were very interested in
my Portuguese euros (which are boring), and I'm still on the lookout for
San Marino and Vatican euros (fat chance). So if you watch, you will see
many people at the cash register turning over the coin to see from where
the coin came. This summer, it's increasing because of the holiday
travels (I wonder if anyone has calculated the 'mixing factor' of
countries' Euros with other countries' Euros?) It's a curiosity about
one's money I find really refreshing.
Amara
-- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** gravity check n. a fall.
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