Post by Athel Cornish-BowdenNow that the smaller coins have become worthless
My wife has just taken on the job of "biscuit Nazi" for our choir. That
means she buys the coffee and tea and milk and biscuits, and gets to say
how many biscuits each person is entitled to. (Sometimes this breaks
down into categories, because things like Tim Tams are greatly prized.)
She took this on at a difficult time, because this weekend we celebrated
the choir's 30th birthday, which inter alia meant hosting people from
other choirs for a big concert.
The standard rule is that you put one dollar into a green cup when you
serve yourself with refreshments. (It used to be fifty cents, but the
former biscuit Nazi ended up out of pocket, which was undesirable.) For
some reason that cup has accumulate a great deal of shrapnel. So, to
help out, I decided today to swap smaller coins for larger from my own
resources. The end result is that the kitty now contains $10 in paper
money, while my own personal collection of coins includes a huge number
of 5c coins.
I can live with that, because I use up low-denomination coins when I buy
my daily newspaper. I'm also good at preparing the coins when queuing at
the supermarket checkout, so it won't be long before I get rid of that
shrapnel.
The lesson I take from this is that, while the smaller coins appear
worthless individually, they do have value once you've collected a
hundred of them.
--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia