It's not just pennies, it's all coins. In a former life I worked in retail and almost nobody would fish around in their pockets for exact (or even near) change. They'd always hand me bills for their purchase even if they had just completed a transaction and had the coins in their pocket. That was in the 90's, and I still see it happening today, even though I'm no longer in the retail world.
we could just go back to writing checks while we're at it.
I will never "tap" my debit card as long as I have any legal option. Everyone else can wait for me to exercise my consumer rights, by inputting my PIN, verifying the amount displayed on screen etc.
Courtesy may seem outdated to some, but it can occasionally come back to bite people. Being overly rude to waitstaff is something I’m concerned with around promotions because of how they might treat people inside the company. Without better information you extrapolate.
Tapping (NFC) or dipping (EMV) are safer and faster for everyone.
How pitiful are you to think "consumer rights" not only exist, but are worth "exercising"? What, do you have the right to spend money on marked-up garbage? The right to be sold to bigger "consumers"? You are just a "consumer" and not a citizen, apparently.
Most people I know just pocket everything and put on a box at home for undetermined time.
I also keep the obvious fakes.
It's not that hard or time consuming if you actually use your change instead of letting it accumulate. I typically have less than a dollar in coins on my person at any given time because I spent it.
If you're paying in cash, you either take time to count the change you're going to spend, or you take time waiting for the cashier to count the change you're going to get. Or you go cashless and avoid the whole thing
And on the occasions where I can only make (exact change + simple amount), I often get deer-in-headlights looks from cashiers who can't do mental arithmetic and apparently haven't learned how to get the machine to understand payments of more than one physical bill or coin.
(Entering a discussion about that kind of topic can be a pretty sure way to invoke Godwin's Law, so the most sane and civil option is to downvote and walk away.)
