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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."
the cashier may have been stupid, but what cop would lock you up for using $2 bills? Shouldn't a government employee know of such dominations? I was under the impression cops need evidence before arresting you.
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
For Baltimore County police, said spokesman Bill Toohey, "It's a sign that we're all a little nervous in the post-9/11 world."
Yeah, potentially counterfeit (as judged by a Best Buy employee!) $2 bills are top on my priority list after 9/11. It's so I can't even sleep at night. Thank god we've got people like "spokesman" Bill Toohey protecting us. I don't know what's scarier: That he'd say something like that, or that there's probably a couple hundred million Americans who would nod their heads in "understanding".
This story has everything: Evil Best Buy. Stupid and ignorant employees with a bizarre sense of power and no sense of customer service. Questionable law enforcement policies. Idiot using 9/11 as the ultimate cop-out.
The only problem with the story is that this time the Feds came in and the situation got better.
Mr. Mike Bolesta, please do not rest until everyone responsible for this debacle is severely reprimanded, fined, or has their employment terminated. They are your oppressors. Rise up against them.
For Baltimore County police, said spokesman Bill Toohey, "It's a sign that we're all a little nervous in the post-9/11 world."
WTF DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING???
I had better not find myself jaywalking next time I go to Otakon, or else I might get shot on sight. You know how those terrorists are always committing minor felonies and misdemeanors...
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
Unfortunately for him, the cashier did not seem to understand that the $2 bill is indeed legal US tender
So the headline should say "BestBuy cashier broke the law".
It's been 30 years since I've seen a $2 bill, but I don't work in retail.
People typically don't work in retail very long, and retail sales people often aren't 30 years old, so there must be many who have never seen a $2 bill.
It seems like the police and other institutions in America love to use their 'free' 24 hour arrest period as a kind of on the spot punishment for anyone they don't like. they can be either held on something specific like suspicion of fraud or just for that old catch-all 'disorderly conduct'. I would imagine stores like best buy also like to use this for annoying customers - just call up and claim something arrestable is going on and who are the cops going to believe, some guy, or a reputable store? Was it even fucking necessary to handcuff this guy? i thought cuffs were only for uncooperative people and maybe transporting? There can't be much in the way of compensation if you get locked up for absolutely nothing, and in some cases people get more than 24 hours without lawyers! So just remember, if you come accross a bad cop, they can have you for a day for so much as walking funny or, and lets face it this is the real reason, paying a bill with to many small notes - don't give me that "we didn't know $2 bills wer legal and the ink looked dodgy", they were just pissed off because he was playing with them - the $2 and running ink was just a ticket for them to call the cops.
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Well, it's not necessarily stupid per se, but there will hopefully be a few lawsuits over this bullshit. False arrest, defamation, etc. And I think Best Buy should be charged criminally with refusing to accept legal US currency, if that's a law anywhere on the books.
Seeing stories like these makes me feel less inclined to step into a Best Buy unless I really need to. I'm finding better deals and less hassle through online stores anyway.
Best Buy really needs to get its act together and start a new focus on customer service. Otherwise, they're going to lose a significant amount of their business to online retailers, and others that are still bricks-n-mortar.
To paraphrase a poster on Fark.com (can't give you an exact quote, they spilled beer on their database :) "I feel sorry for the Secret Service agent. You train for years to bust big counterfeiters, and then you get called for this."
It's a well known fact that Best Buy hires only the stupidest people it can find, but a cop ought to at least know what currencies are legal.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
First Best Buy was on Slashdot for allegedly abusive practices concerning rebates. Now this. Does Best Buy management have any more sink-the-company ideas?
The correct way to handle this was for Best Buy top management to apologize to everyone, and give the guy whatever he wants from the store free. Apparently they still haven't done that.
If it were me, if I were the Best Buy CEO, I would be on the phone now, saying to the guy, "Can I personally deliver our top-of-the-line home theatre to your house in 30 minutes? It's free. In return, I need you to sign this form accepting our sincere apologies." Then all the stories would be about what a great deal the guy got.
But no. Now that Osama bin Laden showed the way, everyone has to imitate violent extremist fundamentalist Arabs now, don't they? Treat everyone else with hostility.
When the officer came, he noticed that the bills all had sequential serial numbers - apparently a common sign in counterfeit currency.
Identical numbers is believable, for a simple copying setup, but sequential? Whatever mechanism a counterfeiter has to add serial numbers to the unnumbered bills coming off the copier/printer, making it a non-repeating psuedo-random sequence, or simply adding 4357 instead of 1 for each cycle, is trivial.
As a "mere foreigner" you have an unfair advantage -- you haven't had a chance to absorb the folklore that "everybody knows".
The article says that he used to give kids $2 bills as lunch money. It's an uncommon item, and the kids thought it was neat. A source of some amusement.
Now his son doesn't want to take them, because of the trouble it caused. What's the lesson? Straying from the norm gets you in trouble. A little uniqueness used to be a source of amusement, now it's a source of fear. I feel sad about this.
It reminds me of the Harry Chapin song, "Flowers Are Red".
This comment got me thinking. It seems that US currency has gone through many different changes over the years, and yet it's all still legal tender, resulting in a confusing mish-mash of coins and bills and whatnot. Is there any reason why all this currency is kept as legal tender? Here in the UK, when a new coin is introduced the old one is gradually phased out, with lots of public notices about the change. Then after a while the old coin ceases to be legal tender, although it can still be exchanged at banks. This seems to me to be a far more sensible solution, as it avoids the confusion that can occur when there are many different coins of the same denomination.
Santa's suicide mission go!
The ticket machines for some train lines also use them. NJTransit the new jersey rail company has ticket machines that accept both Susan Bs and the new dollars, and also dispenses them as change.
Other than that I haven't see them in circulation.
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
Easy to tell the things apart from others, and they naturally sort themselves out in your pocket. Makes me not miss the old "Isaac Newton" quid that was phased out in the 'eighties. It's also the best reason I can think of for Great Britain to stay out of the Euro.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Yes, but given that most things have to accept coins *and* bills, wouldn't it make more sense to replace low-denomination bills with coins?
Visit somewhere in Europe and see how it makes sense.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Yes it does. Most countries aren't so silly as to make all of their bill denominations the same size and color. But that's another rant.
Those almost completely worthless pens are supposed to make a black mark if it's printed on paper, as opposed to the fabric actual bills are printed on. They're just iodine! It reacts with paper and turns black. They aren't some magical counterfit detecting thing.
Having smeared ink on money is rare, but it happens. If you get it, you should take it to the bank and they'll replace it. It's not very common sign of counterfitting...counterfitters don't use ink that runs either.
Oh, and I love the concept that sequential bill numbers are somehow suspicious. Yeah, the counterfitters have the ability to change numbers (Which many do not), and decided they'd make it easy on themselves by counting in one direction, instead of just picking random numbers. Riiiight.
Sequential bill numbers are the opposite of suspicious WRT counterfitting, the only way you get those is at a bank, and banks do not get counterfit money from the mint. (He might have robbed a bank, but that's an entire different matter.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Excuse me, but how exactly does one equate suspected small-scale counterfeiting with hijacking airliners, flying them into buildings and killing thousands of people?
If this signifies anything, it's how, in the post-9/11 world, American society has gotten so moronic, brow-beaten and petrified that cops seriously expect us to buy such a flimsy excuse for their Gestapo tactics.
By the way, I went to grade school in Cockeysville, MD. My parents live only a few miles away. I'll make sure they avoid that particular store.
Maybe it's just me but I don't get it. Where's the fun in paying with $2 bills? It seems the only reason to do that is you can force others into a conflict where you will be proven right in the end. I understand confronting people and then being proven right. But egging others into a conflict? That just seems wheeny.
Not only do I not get the humour but I get the outrage even less. Why do people get mad when they spend two dollar bills and the seller doesn't recognize it as legal tender. By very nature of the fact that the spender is going out of his way to get two dollar bills he has to recognize that they are rarely used and many don't know they exist. Don't you give up your right to be outraged by people questioning your actions when you've chosen actions just so that they would raise questions?
If you enjoy creating conflict with these kinds of stunts then fine. I mean I still don't get it but your fun doesn't seem to harm anyone. But if you're going to get angry when people respond to the bait that you are laying out for them then why do it? And I certainly don't think there's any reason to have empathy for you if you do get exactly the responce you were hoping for.
He didn't get chucked in a cell for being stubborn, he got chucked in a cell because the clerk is an idiot, as were the officers responding to the call.
Any marginally competent lawyer should be able to get him at least six figures from both the store, and the municipality where this occurred.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The first tip I left when I visited london was 7 pounds.
I threw in a few loose coins like I typically do here. oops, I apperently tipped $10.00 on a $13.00 breakfast.
I bet I made somebody happy though.
The entire time I was in England I was confused as to why I would have loose change worth more then I usually cary in cash in the US.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
> Now nobody uses the new one either.
Guess you haven't been to Ecuador. Here, where the US dollar is the official currency, you get golden dollar coins as change at least as often as the $1 bills, probably more.
Personally, I'm super-ticked that the US Mint quit making the things. They beat the crap out of $1 bills, and cost the government so much less to make and maintain. Why the heck didn't the gov't just ignore the whiners and pull the $1 bill?
He'd never heard of the state of Maryland.
People that stupid should be euthanized. Seriously.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Just try to tuck a Euro into a dancer's garter belt.
Low denomination bills have their uses. ;^)
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Sorry, but I was also a waiter once, and a bartender more than once, and a cashier way more than once, and I have no sympathy. .. probably far more than they saved by shutting off conversations with conmen who then went on to find other avenues for exploitation.
The fact that a scam can start with those words is a reason to be wary. It is not a reason to shut a person down before they have a chance to explain what the mistake was.
Many a scam starts out with "Hello" too. Assuming that every conversation which starts with "Hello" is a scam is not only stupid, it's bad business.
Assuming that your customers are con artists causes you to end conversations which would otherwise have benefitted you - as was the case with my conversation with the Woolworth's cashier.
I didn't make the assumption that the cashier I encountered was a typical employee, but if she treated others the way she treated me I'd imagine that Woolworth's lost a hell of a lot of business.
But you (ie: USA) have a slight issue:
You'd have to rejig your sales tax system to scrap penny coins.
If something is advertised at $4.00, you end up paying $4.00 + tax, and it's to allow for this tax which is often in the individual cent range, you have to keep the penny coin.
In New Zealand, by contrast, virtually all retailers quote tax-inclusive prices, and they're often rounded to 5 cents (our smallest coin is the 5 cent piece).
Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
In Britain we don't have the felony/misdemeanour distinction that you have in the USA. And you'd have to go back before the founding of the USA to find an era when execution was anything like that universal a punishment. Sounds apocryphal to me...
--
USA: home of the world's largest terrorist training camp.
Would you mind changing your quote to instead point at the actual views of the administration of our country and not a generally vague and inaccurate statement about the sentiment of all the population? For example,
Current USA Government: the enemy of the free world.
That would be a much more accurate statement and wouldn't malign the large percentage of the US population who's views do not reflect that of our "leaders." There is a significant distinction. Thanks
I hear you- tossing dimes into the till isn't messy or brutal, but a real PITA when someone needs to catch that last bus to get home, or has someone watching their children waiting for them, so they can go to work, etc.
Watching how people treat retail staff and places, it makes me wonder about making people work well-monitored menial-pay gigs in their youth (not unlike mandatory national service) so they would (hopefully) learn about empathy, respect, having to live on low wages-something along those lines. So often, people act like those working manual or retail work are less than human somehow, and fair game for rudeness and contempt.
It may sound naive, but I was raised to believe that a person should not be judged because of the work they do, if it is honest work done well. If a person abuses others by their power and position (Enron management, anyone?)- they deserve contempt- not the guy who collects the trash. At the hospital where I currently work, the director of my service is highly-credentialed - also dissembling, judgmental, biased, and driven primarily by his image. OTOH,a custodian I know on the evening shift is one of the the most pleasant and hard-working people I've known. I know the access he has- he could do amazing damage or theft is he chose to do so. And I'd rather spend an hour with him than five minutes with the director, any day.