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Comment by maestroia | Hacker News Reader

Used to????

I still do.

I was recently asked by a young counter staffer who could not make change without the cash register whether I wanted to buy an extended warranty... on a pack of batteries.

You should have gotten the warranty and then gone back in a month and asked for a warranty replacement "These are defective, I put them in my flashlight and they worked fine for a few weeks, then just stopped working."

The anecdote from cf100clunk is apical and worth spreading (and I do not believe represents a "single isolated case"), but the follow-up J. suggests is not impossible:

a story is known (not verified) of someone who insured a box of precious cigars, but in time smoked them, then requested payment from the insurance - presumably thinking "if one is fool enough to cover consumables, then has to follow consequently": the insurance company sued the insurer for arson.

me too, as a customer I frequently hand over seemingly strange amounts of change on top of a few dollars; goal: enhance the number of quarters I get back for parking meters

Relevant Dilbert: https://dilbert.com/strip/1993-03-20

I felt busted the first time I saw this.

I remember this skill being slowly lost as I grew up in the US - then I moved to Germany where grocery store cashiers would specifically ask for extra cents to get simpler change. And now with digital payments on the rise I get to watch it slowly be lost a second time.

But you used to too

yeah, I didn't want to quibble with his quibble, but the keyword was everybody used to

May Mitch rest in peace :)

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