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Grocery Refuses to Take Dad's Coins to Pay for Baby Food; Store Cites Anthrax Fear

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (AP) - A father who scraped up $3.13 in change to buy baby food was foiled when a grocery store refused to accept the coins, citing a fear of anthrax.

Anthony Ouellette went to another store and used a coin-counting machine to tally his 150 rolled pennies and $1.63 in loose pennies, nickels and dimes.

"I didn't want to go through that again because it's kind of embarrassing," said Ouellette, 27, who works three jobs to pay bills for 5-month-old Abbygail and the rest of his family.

Ouellette took the change to the Market Basket on Monday to buy some milk, three jars of baby food and a newspaper, but the cash register clerk said she could not take rolled coins.

He offered to unroll the $1.50, but a supervisor refused the idea.

"I just couldn't believe it. Anybody takes change, I thought," said Ouellette. "I could understand if I came in there with $50 or $60 worth of change."

Manager Darin Artus said the company began rejecting rolled coins after anthrax scares at other supermarkets, where rolled coins concealed a powdery substance.

"I don't want to put a bunch of pennies in the drawer," he said Wednesday.

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2002

Answers

I had seen this happen before Sept 11 and thought it was disgusting that the stores don't want to be "inconvenienced". Or could it be that they hire people that can't count.

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2002

I have found that they usually write your driver license number on the roll, but I have never had them reject a roll.

As to counting, most businesses that handle cash have coin counters. If it is a grocery store, or Walmart type store, it should have one or two. Maybe this is a 'mom and pop' type store? They refer to scares at other supermarkets, and cite that 'the company' began rejecting rolls, but legally they cannot refuse currency. Or has that law been changed? [no pun intended]

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2002

Yep. I've seen them refuse rolls at the check out around Columbus. At Big Bear, they wave you over to the bank portion of the store or send you to the customer service desk at other places.

The last time I asked about this, the cashier said that it was store policy to keep customers from shorting them, not to mention that it slowed down the cashiers who had to account for all the change in their drawers.

I just gather up all my change twice a year, and take it over to my bank, who lets customers use the coin sorter for free.

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2002

Then how do you get back at those evil stores who stick you with Canadian coins which other merchants then refuse to take?

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2002

I have several things I do with Canadian change in American stores:

1. Refuse it if I have been to the bank recently. I smile and say, "Sorry, can't take this. The machines at work won't take it."

2. Take my change to the bank and get American money.

3. Save it in a plastic bag for when I do get over to Canada, which I do about twice a year in normal years (I'm 5 hours away from the border).

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2002

I think all their customers should go in and pay for something with a load of change. Been there, and nobody ever refused to take my change for a pint of milk.

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2002

Speaking of fraud with coins, this is an exciting true story which I read as a boy in Coronet magazine. (Coronet, Look magazine, Saturday Evening Post, the magazines my family read when I was growing up, now sadly all gone.)

Anyway, a storekeeper discoved he had been cheated, out of nine cents. Someone went to the trouble of cutting a dime and a penny in half, lengthwise, and them gluing the halves of the pennies onto the halves of the dimes. This wily individual then presented the two coins dime-side up, presenting an apparent twenty cents of purchasing power while contributing only eleven cents of real money.

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2002

In reality the store owner was cheated out of twenty cents. Once the two coins were altered, they were worth nothing, and became counterfeit.

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2002

If I'd been the storekeeper, I would have found the whole incident so hilarious that I would have made cufflinks out of them. Great conversation pieces.

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2002

It is funny. :)

In particular, the storekeeper's response.

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2002

You know there are a lot of old houses in England and all the ones we lived in were bloody old. You can shove quaintness. Anyway, one of the newer ones was built in probly mid-Victorian times and was a terrace-house (rowhouse) which was right on the sidewalk, no front yard. It was also a tram stop, then a bus stop. There were "coal-'oles" in the sidewalk, a trap-doored chute where coal was dumped through into the cellar (which was then gradually transferred upstairs, mostly by us kids, for the fires in winter).

Next door to us was an off-license. (All right, I'm going as fast as I can, dammit.) An off-license is the forerunner of a 7-11. They had a very large trapdoor in the center so that barrels of beer could be rolled down into their cellar. These trapdoors were made of wood, probly old oak or something. So my brother affixed a screw to a shilling and screwed it firmly into the trapdoor of the off-license. We would hang out of my bedroom window and watch people waiting for the bus try to pick up the shilling. It amused us for weeks until the old git next door got it out of his cellar 'ole trapdoor.

Then we started blowing bubbles that floated down on the bus- waiterers. . .

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2002

LOL! Mean Wittle Kids. . . .

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2002

And, late at night, when the courting couples were snogging, thinking nobody was about, we would hang out my window and make silly comments, like, "How can they hold their breath that long?" and we'd make giant sucking sounds.

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2002