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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   29356 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

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A long while back when I was a troll-y 20-something I walked into a drugstore and bought a newspaper. This was back in the days of 50¢ papers, to be clear.

I paid with a shiny new Susan B. Anthony dollar coin I just got as change from a post office.

The poor cashier.

She looked at the coin thinking that it's a quarter and looked up like I was stupid. Then she looked back down and realized it wasn't a quarter. She looked back up at me with a WTF expression. Back at the coin. Rung it up as a dollar. The register opened. She looked down at the drawer. Then back up at me with a "why did you do this to me?" look. Down at the drawer. I think she chucked it with the dollar bills. Back up at me with a scowl. Drawer to retrieve a couple quarters to hand to me.

This was easily 30 years ago and I still have it burnt into my memory.

I expect it would play out the same today.

I recall dealing with both that and the $2 bill a lot in college. The ticket machines for the train didn't take cards, and for some reason gave dollar coins as change, so if I only had $20s I now had 18 Susan B. Anthonys in my pocket. Then one of the officers in my frat had the bright idea of giving $2s as change at our parties, so people would associate us with those and I guess come to parties more. Must have annoyed the hell out of cashiers.

You just unearthed repressed memories of me trying to get home from college and my pants falling down from the weight of all those damn Susan B. Anthony and Sacagwea coins from the train station.

They figured out that a few million people said "it looks just like a quarter" and the modern dollar coins are colored gold so they can't be mistaken for quarters. They are still the same size and weight so vending machines can handle them.

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