Things That Are Common In San Francisco, But That San Franciscans Still Can't Seem To Wrap Their Heads Around And Also That They Hate Very Much: Cash Only

So you get cash, you go back, and you're ready to buy the Red Bull for $2.75. Fine.

But of course you only have $50 and $100 bills, and the store doesn't take those. "I no have enough change! Only small bill!" the elderly Chinese man behind the counter barks at you.

"Fine," you grumble to yourself, and swear to get your petty revenge on this elderly small business owner.

You run back into your apartment and take out your change jar, dumping the entire thing on the floor. You carefully sort out exactly 275 pennies without even noticing the hour and a half that's gone by. FUCK! But the store is still open for 10 more minutes.

You shovel the pennies into a plastic back and run downstairs to the store. At the counter, you throw the bag of pennies in front of the Chinese man, and look at him with a derange smirk.

"There you go old man, that's exactly 275 pennies."

He looks at you with a dumbfounded expression for a moment. But it quickly turns into an arrogant smile.

"You forgot tax!"

Realizing your mistake, you sulk out of the store with your bag of useless copper coins as he flips the sign to "CLOSED." You have failed, and you go home to weep and contemplate suicide.

you did a great job making light of the trauma that is cash only bars and whatnots. very awesome.

btw fun fact: it is a violation of EVERY credit card company to have a "minimum" amount to use a card. It is illegal, and if you report them to Visa, etc., the business could lose their ability to take cards at all, or at least get a warning blah blah blah. The reason they do it is they don't want to pay the Visa/Whatever "tax" for a pack of gum, which is understandable, but if they really don't want to deal with it....they can say cash only!

D'oh!

@Greg

I don't mind the minimums. I understand that the CC companies harm small businesses, so I willing to compromise by not being a snitch and turning in some poor mom n' pop to the feds (or whoever it is you would bother with such a minor, petty complaint).

A local coffee shop where I used to live started offering gift cards with a poster explaining how much more of your money stayed in the building if you bought a $20-30 gift card with your credit card and then bought all your coffee with the gift card compared to if you put every individual coffee purchase on the credit card one at a time.

Any business that limits the ways in which it takes money from a customer has its head up its ass. Your customer has come to give you money; if one form of payment is less profitable than another, consider it the cost of the relationship building process. Also, a customer in bar with an open credit card will always spend more. The short-sightedness of businesses in this regard is amazing.

Unless I'm mistaken it's also a violation for businesses to offer a different price for paying in cash, but just about every gas station in town seems to have moved that way.

To me the bigger problem is larger businesses that clearly are not hurting for customers, but insist on this. Like Burgermeister. It's not uncommon to have a check for two come to $25-30, but they think that cash-only is reasonable despite having three or four locations around town (the Daly City location is bizzare though in that not only do they take cards, but they also have full table service). House of Nanking, IIRC, has a rather high limit for credit despite having a line out the door every time I've ever been by.

Most of these places seem to think that they can just put in some off-brand ATM and force the charges onto their customers. I mean, who cares about treating them well if you can save some cash?

What they probably aren't thinking of, however, is that by doing a large amount of business and being cash-only you're inviting robbery, as the Cole Valley Burgermeister found out not too long ago. Is it really worth it to make yourself a target and inconvenience your customers?

Cash-free is the future, but this seems to be yet another area where the apparently high-tech San Francisco insists on staying rooted in the past.

This is the young old guy again, Being there in San Francisco in the 80's and watching people bounce checks like crazy and stealing stolen credit cards and using them left and right and then the owner of the sore takes the lose I have to agree with them no money no service. Simple yes not every one is a theif but theifs do talk to each other when they get a good thing you have to remember. But what do I know I'm just a 50 year young black guy righttttttt!