Penny pinchers
Once a proud token worth saving and earning, the cent is now often tossed aside - and, increasingly kidnapped by cashiers
Pity the poor penny.
Once, it had swagger. With a pedigree dating back to 1787, it was feted as the first currency authorized by the United States. As a money symbol, it was deemed as rock-solid as the presidential jaw of Abraham Lincoln, which first appeared on it in 1909. Boston's own Paul Revere, resident silversmith, supplied some of the copper for those bygone pennies.
Now, everywhere you turn around town, the zinc-and-copper one-cent piece is taking it on the chin: Shoved out of the economic picture by charge cards. Flung into the trash by people who think it's mucky and worthless. Hijacked by cashiers who assume you're among the 27 percent of Americans who don't even keep track of their loose change, according to a May 2005 survey conducted by
And so, as you handed the South End cashier two dollars and ten cents for a $2.09 cappuccino the other day, you wondered: What would she do with the penny? Tip herself by keeping the change? Or return it to its rightful owner?
Would you feel like a cheapskate, having to ask for your penny back? Or a chump, who let another penny slide away into someone else's pocket? The awkward silence between strangers clung to the air. You were not optimistic about freeing Abe from her clutches.
After all, members of the penny's extended family -- nickels, dimes, quarters, silver dollars -- are also facing hard times.
The other day, you saw a young woman in Brookline pay for a 79-cent bagel with a debit card. In Cambridge, officials last week unveiled parking meters that take charge cards. As we continue our transition into a cashless society, the payment-card tracking firm CardWeb.com says credit and debit card transactions under $10 hit $35.5 billion last year, more than six times the use of plastic for small transactions purchases in 2000.
Along a penny lane that was once pristine, you now discovered many who found it easy to despise the cent above all other coins.
At the
''I have a thing about pennies," Lavelle told you.
He hates them.
''They're more hassle than they're worth, the space they take up versus their value," he said. ''In my pocket. In my car. Wherever. They're dirty."
Lavelle was buying eggs and Gatorade, a $4.08 purchase. He pulled out a $5 bill and fumbled around for change, but only had a nickel. Seeing that, the cashier gave him back $1 and scooped three pennies from the Leave-a-Penny Take-a-Penny tray on the counter, one of those ubiquitous containers that treat pennies like lepers by separating them from the rest of the colony of coins.
Lavelle said that whenever he gets stuck with pennies, he, too severs them from the rest of his coinage, and puts them in a special place.
''I throw them in the trash," he said.
On the Internet, you were introduced to a group called ''Citizens for Retiring the Penny," which advocates rounding off prices to the nearest nickel, as have some members of Congress. The group was founded by a 1999 MIT graduate named Jeff Gore.
''The point of currency is to facilitate transactions," Gore, 27, told you by phone. ''People fishing in their pockets. The cashier has to open a new bag of pennies. For me, it's the waste of time I object to."
Gore is a busy guy. As a graduate student in physics at the University of California at Berkeley, he has tackled topics such as ''Single Molecule Investigations of the Mechanochemical Cycle of DNA Gyrase."
However, Gore did find the time to come up with this calculation, posted on the group's website:
''The National Association of Convenience Stores and Walgreens drug store chain estimated that handling pennies adds 2 to 2.5 seconds to each cash transaction (remember that we are including the occasional customer who spends 30 seconds looking for the penny in his pocket). Let us estimate that each person goes through three of these transactions per day and that on average there is one person waiting in line (making for a total of three people's time wasted in each transaction). We can then calculate that the presence of pennies wastes (3 transactions/day) X (2.25 seconds/transaction) X (3 people per transaction) = 20 seconds per day. Probably only about half of the wasted time is directly connected with a cash transaction, giving a total of 40 wasted seconds per day per person. This may not seem like a lot, but it translates to 40 X 365 / 3600 = 4 hours per person per year. If each person's time is worth $15/hour then we arrive at the conclusion that each person is losing $60 per year, at a cost to the nation of over $15 billion per year. . . . "
On the other side of the coin, Edmond Knowles figures he has saved an average of about 90 pennies a day for the last 38 years: On his counter, in jugs, and finally in 55-gallon drums in his garage.
In June, an armored car picked up his 4.5 tons of spare change, and had it recycled through Coinstar.
That would be 1,308,459 pennies, or $13,084.59.
''My daddy always said, 'A penny saved is a penny earned,' " Knowles, 62, told you by phone from his service station in Flomaton, Ala. -- population 1,500.
Knowles said the money's already gone, used to help pay bills.
''I didn't take no vacation in Jamaica," he said.
Like Knowles, many of our children also have not been tainted by the growing anti-penny prejudice. At the end of this month, they'll collecting candy for themselves and pennies for UNICEF.
During the last fiscal year, in the US, their trick-or-treating helped rake in more than $902,416 in coins for UNICEF, out of a total of more than $4.7 million. More than $35,000 worth of the coins came from Boston, according to UNICEF. The kids learn the power of pennies: that 30 of them can provide lifesaving antibiotics for a child suffering from pneumonia; 12 can purchase a dose of vaccine to immunize a child against polio; 6 cents is the price of a packet of salts mixed with safe water to help children with diarrhea fight dehydration.
Meanwhile, it looks like old Abe is trying to fight through all the naysaying and mount a comeback. There's proposed legislation in Congress that would authorize that pennies with a series of likenesses of Lincoln be issued on the ''tails" sides of the coins in 2009, the bicentennial of his birth.
Back at the South End coffee bar waiting for the penny back from the $2.09 tab, the uneasy stillness hung around the counter like steam from an espresso. Then the cashier smashed the calm by firmly closing her register.
''Have a nice day, OK," she smiled, sending you sheepishly on your way as she locked the 16th president in her drawer.
