change

She exhaled loudly, in audibly passive-aggressive fashion. She didn’t quite roll her eyes, but it was close.

Of whom am I speaking? A girlfriend justly angry that I forgot to give her a birthday gift?

No, a Starbucks employee in Paris who was annoyed that I used a 20-Euro note to pay a bill of 7.25. Worse yet, she wasn’t even angry that I didn’t have a 10-Euro note: she was angry that I didn’t have exactly 25 cents on me. Seriously. She actually asked twice if I honestly didn’t have 25 cents on me.

It is something I will never understand. There are any number of things I dislike about my home country, the United States. But one way in which the U.S. is praiseworthy is that it’s one of a tiny handful of countries across the world in which merchants do not generally become all huffy and puffy about making reasonable change in the course of daily business.

Granted, certain American customers push this fact to the point of needless hostility. I was once in the Cilantro café on Mohamed Mahmoud Street in Cairo when a very loud and abrasive American gentleman entered (he was obviously a clueless tourist), wanting change for an Egyptian 100-Pound note. That’s a fairly large bill in terms of everyday Egyptian business, and it takes time to learn daily tricks for breaking the 100- and 200-Pound notes in Cairo.

But this particular American guy wasn’t even buying anything, yet he was still fuming about how Cilantro “is a business” and thus “they should” make change for his 100, even though he wasn’t a customer.

I got so sick of listening to him ranting at the confused counter staff that I pulled out five 20’s (the smallest thing I had) and gave them to him for his 100. Instead of a grateful departure, however, all this elicited from him was an equally abrasive: “That’s a start,” as though even I as a mere customer owed him the change. He then demanded that the Cilantro staff break his newly acquired 20’s, and stormed out in a huff when they would only give him (with visible reluctance) a 10 and two 5’s for one of the 20’s.

Now, that guy was simply a jerk.

But the fact remains that if someone is an actual customer of your business, it doesn’t seem like a 20-Euro note is at all out of line for a purchase of 7.25. No need to throw a fit about it, Starbucks.