If You Want The Nice Change, You Have To Have A Nice Change
I work at a gas station in a pretty fancy/bougie part of town. I work with the night manager from ten at night through to six in the morning. I’m relatively new, so I’m still learning about the quirky little processes that are always unique to certain places of work.
A customer pulls up around 1:00 am.
Customer: “I want $10 of gas on tank three.”
He tries to hand me a hundred-dollar bill.
Me: “Do you have anything smaller, or a card payment? I can’t break that.”
Customer: “That’s all I got. It’s legal tender, so take it and figure it out.”
Me: “If you got a bit more gas, I could—”
Customer: “Nope, not going much further, so I don’t need you making me buy more than I need. Take my legal tender and figure it out.”
At this, my manager steps to the side and opens up a locked cupboard that has always been marked as “revenge rolls”. I’ve had yet to ask why. They begin to take out rolls of coins, adding up to $90. It’s a lot of coins, and it takes over almost all the counter between the customer and me.
Customer: “What the f*** is this?!”
Manager: “$90 change, as you’ve requested.”
Customer: “I can’t take all those f****** coins!”
Manager: “You want $10 on tank three? Take my legal tender and figure it out.”
The customer swears a little more but accepts the ridiculous amount of coins, storms out, puts $10 in his tank, and drives off.
Me: *To my manager* “Now I know why they’re called ‘revenge rolls’. Rolls of coins.”
Manager: “Yup. I save them for special customers. You wanna come in here at 1:00 am and demand change from a hundred? You f****** got it!”
My eyes catch something else in the cupboard.
Me: “You actually have some spare tens and twenties in there, too?”
Manager: “For those customers who say ‘please’.”
I may have needed the job for college, but because of that manager, I stayed a little longer in the role than I had to.