My credit union has no money

[susandennis]

I want $5 bills. I use them a lot lately, mainly for tips. I use them in Summer to tip the staff at the ballpark. When I get them in change, I save them. BUT, I don't use cash any more and so my supply is drying up.

I went to the BECU website chat to ask about getting more. I got a list of ATM's that have five dollar bills (none are near me). I said, no problem, I'll go to a branch. There are a million BECU branches around here. Turns out these days NONE of them have cash. There's a headquarters about 20 minutes from here that has cash and maybe they would have some. WTF?????

What a major PIA. I suspect, if I were really nice about it, I maybe could talk a real bank into exchanging twenties for fives even if I don't have an account but seriously. Branches all over town with no cash? I should not be surprised but I am.

I stopped at the fancy bakery this morning to get a loaf of bread. They didn't really have what I wanted but they had a nice brioche loaf so I asked for a loaf of brioche slicked, please. "I don't have a slicer." was the reply. Not 'sorry, our slicer is out of commission or would you mind if we sliced it by hand?'

I left and went to the Franz outlet. Franz is our local bread for the masses baker/distributor and their outlet store is about 4 blocks from the fancy bakery. They had lots of good bread and it was sliced.

I'll bet Goodwill would be willing to trade me 5s for 20s...

I love this keyboard sooooo much!

Comments

[luscious_purple]

Geez, what kind of credit union and/or bank has no cash on hand????

[jss]

I hate inflation. Like you I use $5 bills for tips nowadays. Years ago I'd use $2 bills and made a point to get them from my credit union (I'd call and if necessary ask them to order them well in advance).

[greghousesgf]

I use cash a lot less than I used to. I remember when people used to make jokes about the idea of being afraid of germs from touching money.

[river57]

If I need them I do "cash back" at the grocery store check-out and specify the denominations.

[kaishin108]

Franz is pretty good! When my favorite brand is not available, I can go for Franz! :)

[seattlejo]

Yeah, the lack of cash at 99% of BECU branches is super annoying.

[hopefulspirit]

I wouldn't have thought it would be so difficult to get cash. So weird.

For a fancy bakery, they don't seem to want to sell their nice bread very badly. That's too bad.

[winterpear]

I remember when bread came unsliced... holy crow I'm old.

[rsc]

We are on opposite sides of the sliced-bread coin. We prefer to slice our own bread (even though it's sometimes a pain) because it stays fresher that way, and the local supermarkets tend to have a very limited supply of unsliced bread. (We just bought a bread machine for the apartment – we've had one in Gloucester for years – so this will be less of a problem going forward.)