coinstar

This evening after dinner I remembered that I'd forgotten to buy nappies, we'd only one left. Just before I ran out the house I spotted some saved coppers in a glass and remembered the 'coinstar' machine in Sainsbury's. It accepts all coins and gives you a receipt to exchange for cash when you're done. I finished at the checkout and queued up at the coinstar patiently (yes, there was a queue) frustrated because I wanted to shove 'em in and get back home quickly in case the girls were playing up. I put my coins in and the machine jammed immediately. Call store employee for assistance, it read. So I found somebody who said he had to get the keys to open the damn thing, and I waited another ten minutes. All for the sake of a cup full of coppers.

When the key man arrived, he said it was because the coins I was putting in were so old and grubby that it couldn't read the face of each coin, and upon not recognising them it jams. He told me to clean them and try again afterwards. I bought a bottle of Diet Coke to clean them, and had to queue for that aswell. By that point I'd been at the store for 30 minutes when I could have been in and out in under ten.

When I got home Rosario saw me pouring the coke into a pint glass of coppers, and as I told her my plight I realised the cost of the coke was probably the same as the glass of coins I was trying to clean. She laughed, and said that Diet Coke cleaning coins is a myth. I never was any good at business.