In message , at 16:09:06 on Tue,
16 Sep 2008, Martin Underwood remarked:
I very very rarely pay for anything by cash these days, so maintaining
a supply of change for parking etc is a major problem.

Or even a £1 coin for supermarket trollies. I've solved that one now by
having a Brazilian coin in the car that's almost exactly the same size
as a £1, so releases a shopping trolley. It's worth about 20p I think.
No fraud, because you get back the coin you put in.

Interesting how a device like "£1 deposits" completely changes the
shopping paradigm. It used to be the case that there was a "pool" of
spare trollies at the far end of the checkouts, so you could unload from
one onto the belt, while a companion loaded up another as the items were
checked out. Now they can't start the till running until you've unloaded
the whole lot and have an empty trolley to use (bar a small buffer zone
of a couple of bags-worth).

As a result I now rarely buy more that a 3/4 full trolley, as that's all
you can get on most belts.
--
Roland Perry