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Best Buy Has Man Arrested for Using $2 Bills
An anonymous reader writes "Mike Bolesta of Baltimore thought he would protest Best Buy's not-so-great customer service and pay his bill with 57 $2 bills. For his trouble he got to spend some time in the county lock-up." From the article: "..Bolesta was contacted by the store, and was threated with police action if he did not pay the [installation] fee he was told before did not exist. As a sign of protest, Bolesta decided to pay using only $2 bills, which he has an abundance of because he asks his bank for them specifically. Unfortunately for him, the cashier did not seem to understand that the $2 bill is indeed legal US tender, since the bill itself is not often used. After rudely refusing to take the money, the cashier accepted the bills, only to mark them as though they were conterfeit."
Truthfully, I would find it strange as well. I have not seen a $2 bill
- at -Taco-Bell.html
in a long long time. Same thing with all those $1 coins. However,
people tend to accept strange coin amounts a lot easier then paper
money amounts.
It happens more then you might think. For a funny story about trying
to use a $2 bill at Taco Bell, check this out:
http://www.digiserve.com/eescape/closet/silly/2
However, I see it on the web attributed to at least 3 different
authors, so I doubt it really happened.
--greg Vulcan quiescent... Q: What machine shutdown with this message?
Americans got too stupid to accept our own currency.
What's next?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
::Firmly tougue in cheek::
::Removes tongue from cheek::
Maybe he installed the radio to listen to terrorist broadcasts.
Maybe he was laundering money for the terrorists.
Maybe he was just distracting the area law enforcement so that a greater scheme could be employed without hinderence.
You just never know, and everyone is a suspect.
Remember, If you spend your two dollar bills, Al-Queda wins.
Laughable, if it wasn't the mindset of the person who spoke it.
Strangely, as the man was being escorted out of the store, the clerk was heard to say, "Would you like a service contract with that..."
Some settling may occur during posting.
Good thing he didn't pay with Susan B. Anthony dollars.
The poor bastard may have been sent to Death Row!
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
Try using $2 bills at a strip club.
They don't call the cops, they just beat the crap out of you. Then they trash your car.
Not that I know from, er, personal experience.
fsh
I almost exclusively pay with $2 bills. I go to the back every few weeks and get about $400 worth, and just pay for most things with them, or a credit card if the value's quite high?
:)
Why? Mostly, for the expression I get from the counter staff:
"Two dollar bills? Cool! Oh... damn, where do I put them in the till?"
Sometimes they go into the clerk's pocket, after being replaced with more 'common' bills
You know, that a Best Buy would have such an ignorant cashier (who now claims the bills were "smudged" and so "appeared to be counterfeit") does not surprise me in the least. It happens. Lots of people are stupid.
You should try paying in Susan B. Anthony dollars someplace. Even though coins are struck with "One dollar" right on the face, some people insist that they are quarters. Very annoying.
Let all the /.ers unite and protest. Lets not buy from Best Buy. Let the bastards starve. Then all the employees there, including the cashier will have to pose nude for 'PlayBoy Best Buy edition'. I really dig that blonde chick at the store... finally I can get a glimpse ;)
fuvoo: watch something
Like the guy in TFA, I ask for $2 bills all the time from the bank when I cash my paycheck. The bank is more than happy to give them to me, citing that they are a waste of space for other more common bills.
;)
The first round of fun comes when the teller gives me the money- usually tellers count money very fast, but when they get to the $2 bills, they slow down significanty (it's funny to me, at least). Next comes when you try to spend them at Wal-Mart. Here are my favorite examples:
1) The cashier asks me to pay with "regular" money, as she somehow didn't realize $2 bills are legal tender.
2) Another cashier asks me if they are fake. When I tell her no, they are in fact real, she questions me again, and turns on her blinky-light to signal the manager to come over. The manager tells her they can accept them, but asks me not to use them next time. The manager leaves, and the cashier is confused as to where they put the bills, as there is no slot for them. She puts them with the $20s, instead of under the drawer like she should (probably because they both had "2"s on them).
3) Yet another cashier questions their validity about a week later. He says there are no slots for 2s in the drawer, so he can't take them. I tell him there are no slots for 50s and 100s either, which for some reason upsets him. There goes the blinky light, and over comes the manager. She recognizes me from last week, and asks why I continue to "make trouble." I tell her that $2 bills are legal tender, blah blah blah, yet she insists that I only do it to cause problems (well, she kinda has a point there... but I like $2 bills because they are prime, like $5 dollar bills). Basically, she told me I was not welcome to shop there if I continued to try to use $2 bills there. I called the Wal-Mart customer service number, left a complaint, and suprisingly, was rewarded with a $20 gift card. I later received a letter stating that the manager has been contacted, and there is no reason whatsoever that I shouldn't be allowed to spend $2 bills there. So now, every time I go, I make sure I use at least one of them.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
You'd be surprised now some cashiers react to money like that. At the grocery store, I saw someone ahead of me try and pay part of their bill with a 50 cent piece, and the cashier handed it back saying "We don't take Canadian money". I gave the lady two quarters for it after trying to convince the cashier it was really a US coin.
I work at Best Buy. We do not track people ...
But I notice you don't deny giving Canadian quarters in change...
Thanks. You just started a new meme. It may even overcome the "In Soviet Russia..." meme.
A sidebar on coins and currency. When I was a kid, you saw a lot of denominations you no longer see, even though they're still officially in circulation. I believe this is mainly due to the domination of retail by big chains, which don't like to deal with more denominations than will fit easily in a standard cash register. (If you run one cash register, dealing with fifty-cent pieces is a small nuisance. If you run millions of them, dealing with fifty-cent pieces subtracts big bucks from your bottom line.) So they put the "odd" denominations in the bank, and never give them out as change. That's why dollar coins will never catch on, unless and until Congress makes room for them by withdrawing dollar bills.
Kinda reminds me of a math teacher I had back in Junior High.
What's the least number of coins needed to make 45 cents? My answer was 2, a quarter and a 20-cent piece. She thought I was just being my normal sarcastic self, until I brought the coin in the next day.
That was pretty fun. We didn't make 'em for long (1875-1878), but we made 'em.
"try not to confuse the poor cashier" Especially when they give you too much change. ;-) I actually argued over that with one once and finally gave up.
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
Actually we do...they just happen to be as uncommon up here as they are in the States
They seem to be slightly less rare than your $1.00 and $2.00 bills, but i've seen them.
I know I get hassled when I use $1.00/$2.00 Canadian bills in Canada.
Clerk "Where did you get these"
Me "Expo 87"
Clerk "But they say 86 on them"
Me "I imagine they were printed before Expo 87"
Clerk "Why do you have so many"
Me "Well, we can't spend your currency in america, I went with my class and I collected the left over currency from all my classmates, today I bring it back".
[a short time passes as they consult their book to see if it even looks like legal tender]
Clerk "Where do you expect me to put this?"
Me "Under the drawer where you keep your larger bills".
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Not since you guys elected Bush twice. :p
-If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
That's once
Loonie and Toonie.
They both _deffinately_ feel like they're worth something.
Sure, they feel like they are worth something, but the truth is that they are only worth one or two Canadian dollars.
(I keed, I keed!)
Count me as one of the people who thought there was nothing wrong with the "Ike" silver dollar.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
At most
They could create a coin that was worth as much as a dollar. It could be called a dollar coin. That would be neat.
I drank what? -- Socrates
I guess my point is: try not to confuse the poor cashier.
I think I'm going the exact opposite way. I don't buy much at Best Buy anyway but next time I do, I'm stopping by my bank and getting a bunch of $2 bills to do it with.
Am I the only one who expected to see that followed by "walk into a bar"?
I knew a guy who had the habit of tossing dimes into the open cash draw at places like Mc Donald's. Apparently at the time McD's had a policy where they were much more worried if you had extra cash since it means you ripped off a customer where if you came up short you may be stealing from the company. The result is if your over by $.10 you end up counting and recounting and the manager gets to recount and someone has to fill out forms incase the irate costumer shows up looking for their $.10. He claimed that if you could get a dime in three draws it would waste an hour of a managers time.
I remember getting blitzed in Novia Scotia one night (too many Keith's and too many questions about the Ranger's sucktitude back when the NHL existed), and throwing back all of my coins as a tip to the bartender. Waking up alone the next morning, realizing I tipped the bartender about $80 bucks. Canadian bastards :)
The Big Yuan - tracking mainland China
Wait a second, we're missing an important point here:
You go to a bar where you can buy a beer for a buck? Where is this little slice of heaven?
No, because strippers don't like coins.
Nice Marmot
I once got a $50 bill back in change when I should have gotten a $20. Not wanting to screw over some poor cashier I tried to Do The Right Thing (tm) and return the money.
"You've made a small mistake," I said - I swear, that's verbatim what I said, and the verbatim reply I got was
"NO. I don't make mistakes."
Being, in some situations, a slow learner, I repeated my assertion; "No, really, there's been a little mistake made." (Note the regression into passive speech - I was really, really trying to avoid assigning blame here.)
Nope. About six degrees Kelvin comes the reply, "I told you, I don't make mistakes."
"Fine," I replied, walking away, "at the end of the day, when you're adding up, remember that the mistake you didn't make was a $30 mistake."
I was standing outside Buckingham Palace waiting to see the Changing of the Guard, when a mounted cop rode over and herded us away from the gate to make way for a royal coach carrying a man in a Nehru hat. A lady next to me, obviously a fellow Yank, asked him "Who's the guy in the funny hat?" This dialogue ensued:
"That's the Ambassador from Mali, ma'am."
"What country is that?"
"Well, it's...Mali, ma'am."
"Well, where the hell is that?"
Whereupon the cop remembered urgent business elsewhere. I leaned over and said "It's on the Canadian border between Vermont and Manitoba. We depend on them for ball bearings."
She went away obviously satisfied.
rj
Fortunately for my friend, a vacationing Washington State Trooper was in the bar and convinced the bartender to pay for the replacement card -and- cover my friend's party's tab for the evening.
Wow, and whoever said there's never a cop around when you need one?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Homer and Comic Book Guy walk into Moe's
Homer: "When you've got a bum ticker like we do, you need all the friends you can get. And Moe's is the friendliest place in the Rum District."
Homer opens the door. Moe is pointing a shotgun across the bar at the guy with the hunting cap.
Moe: "Get out and take your Sacajawea dollars witch ya. I'll give you till three" (he cocks the shotgun as the guy starts to run). "One." (he pulls the trigger).
The bartender says: "Sorry, one dollar minimum charge."
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck