The Hard Way

As I write this, I am occasionally glancing down at the area in front of my computer screen where I have a disorderly little arrangement of some quarters. Two are badly mangled, perhaps having been run over by cars where I picked them up. It's distinctly possible that those ones are effectively unspendable, raising the very good question of why I took them. Perhaps the answer lies in the slowness with which I naturally acquire quarters.

Quarters are of course very necessary. I may not need them for parking a car, but I do need them for laundry, and the reality is that I use them at a rate which far exceeds that at which I come by them incidentally. When someone conducts a lot of cash transactions, a lot of change comes their way. Who does that these days? I myself deal in cash relatively little. That is the nature of finance these days- the money is mostly just numbers on a screen.

I have a pile of change in jars at home, but it has accumulated over the course of years. I get fast food, I buy drinks and do some other things that generate them, all fitfully and inconsistently. The jar is virtually all pennies, nickles and dimes. I had no use for it until I realized I might use it in the laundry room soda machine. I then was made aware that if one puts small coins into the machine and them ejects, the machine converts them into quarters.

It's true enough that this subversion of the machine's purpose renders it less able to dispense proper change to those who play by the rules. I don't think I will use it for that purpose except in emergency situations, such as coming up a couple of quarters short unexpectedly. When I am at the end of my rope, my ethics become flexible, as do everyone's. For the bulk of my quarters though, I will continue going to the bank and slowly, inexorably, honestly coming by them the hard way.