… doing my bit to alleviate a pet peeve …

“What pet peeve?” you may ask… and for those who think they know me well will probably be asking “Which of your many pet peeves are we talking about here?”

It’s an issue already written about by Malapetaka: being shortchanged when you go to (usually) eating places, where they are out of 1 sen, and just shortchange you without any hesitation, and look at you like you are being a b*tch/*ssh*le if you insist on getting the exact change.

I must report on this, however: there was an exception recently, over at 1901@KLCC – they didn’t have the few sen so gave me 10sen instead. I smiled, and handed it back to them saying “Never mind, take it back,” because I really appreciated them NOT shortchanging me. In fact, this is the same establishment that, maybe a year ago, neither me nor the cashier had enough small change, and in the end I ‘owed’ them about 10sen. The cashier was like “Tak pe lah, kak,” but precisely because they weren’t hung up about it, I made it a point to return a few days later and hand over 10sen to (unfortunately a different) cashier, saying I owed them from a few days ago… of course, they thought I was one crazy woman, teehee! I bet no-one in their right minds would do what I did.. guess I’m in my left mind?? :p

Anyways… so any guesses as to what I did to alleviate this supposed shortage of 1 sen coins?

I suspect most people have some sort of container at home which they use as a receptacle for spare change. Some, like my family, actually have separate containers for the different coins. Over the years, we have accumulated A LOT of coins… while the 10, 20 and 50 sen tend to get reinserted into pockets and wallets, the 1 and 5 sen tend to just accumulate…. And of course, if every household has all these 1sen sitting there doing nothing, no wonder there is a ‘shortage’ of them!

A few days ago I was soooo geram seeing all those 1 sen sitting there doing nothing that I took ALL the 1 and 5 sen coins to be deposited. I meant to weigh them just to have an idea of how much I was banking in, but in the rush of getting to the bank, I forgot… A few years ago, I had already taken some of the 1 and 5 sen and put them back into circulation by depositing them at the bank – got Rm15 of free money. I wondered how much I’d get this time…

Here’s how much I put back into circulation:
1 x 10sen = 0.10 (a stray one that went in the wrong container!)
394 x 5 sen = 19.70
1327 x 1 sen = 13.27
… for a total of RM 33.07

I urge ya.. please make it a point not to hoard those coins… get those 1 sen into circulation today!!