Pennies - A royal pain

If you are new to America, the first thing that catches your attention when you are visiting a friend's house is a mountain of ancient coins. It could be anywhere, though more often than not in a prominent location in the living room. In a cover or in a bowl. Your curiosity is aroused. As you move in for a closer look, wondering if your friends are hardcore numismatists or have struck treasure of some kind, you see "1 cent" written boldly across the centre of a coin in the pile and realisation strikes.. Pennies!

Before we move on let me tell you what I think of pennies.

I THINK PENNIES ARE A ROYAL PAIN IN THE ..... In keeping with the tradition of this blog, I will steer clear from profanity and resist my urge to use an expletive here. But you get my point. Quite literally, in fact. I should know. Everyday, I squirm around in my chair cursing the ten odd pennies I've forgotten to remove from my wallet the previous night. Every night I find a new hole in my pant pockets courtesy the same pennies, that I had moved from my wallet to my pockets after violent protests from my err.. behind. Now don't get me wrong. I am not a coward who shirks at the very mention of pain or discomfort. I would gladly go through a lot of pain for a worthy cause but for something I consider to rank among the top 10 of all useless things in the world.. I REFUSE.

America is supposed to be the richest country in the world. Looking at the number of pennies being passed around, you would think she is a nation of beggars. Quite frankly, even beggars would have no use for pennies and I'm sure they have their own unusable collections of pennies stashed away. The onus is on the word "unusable". If all the unused pennies in America were melted we would have enough metal to lay a railway track from Los Angeles to New York.

At the current exchange rate, 1 cent would translate to ~40 paise. For ~2 cents in India, you could get ONE banana. In the US however for 2 cents you would get ZERO bananas. In fact, zero of everything. You would need ~20 cents to buy a banana. And I really can't think of anything much cheaper than that. I'm sure you will agree with me that any sane person would prefer to pay in a higher currency than carry around 20 coins. Lest there be any doubt, let me also state that I am as sane as my next door neighbor(Who is quite sane, let me assure you). So the coins in my wallet/pocket are dumped on my desk. I pay for a banana or anything else for that matter in a higher currency say quarters or dollars. What do I get in return? More pennies!!! grrrr... The height of the mountain on my desk is still rising. I'm afraid it will touch the ceiling before I graduate.

In the highly unlikely event that an American Senator or Congressman reads this post and decides to do something drastic like propose a bill abolishing pennies, he couldn't. Why couldn't he? Because of the abominable practice of pricing items in the following fashion:
Gas (1 gallon): 1$ 99c or after the recent increase 2$ 47c
Milk (1 gallon): 1$ 59c
Bananas (1 pound): 59c
Tomatoes (1 pound): 99c
Items on restaurant menu: 2$ 99c to 19$ 99c (but not a single round figure)

Note that every transaction REQUIRES that you get 'useless' pennies back. Do marketers seriously think that consumers are fooled by this "psychological pricing" gimmick? Do they really think that people would think of a 9$ 99c purchase costing them in the range of 9$ and not 10$. And by any chance do such people exist? If so, in which country? I would like to settle there and replace Bill Gates as the richest man in the world.

I thank the stars for the widespread use of credit/debit cards, for in their absence, utter chaos would reign in the United States; caused not by hurricanes "Rita" or "Katrina" but the force generated by continuously passing pennies back and forth.

What prompted this post:A few months ago, a friend of mine, Sunil, left UNH to study at a university in Florida. He left me some stuff that he thought I could use. I was rummaging through them today and found this polythene bag filled with pennies!!! With friends like him, who needs enemies?

If any resident of America reading this post would like to claim that she/he has never been in possession of more than a hundred pennies at some point in time, please post a comment with your contact information. I would like to set up an appointment with you for I have never had the privilege of meeting an insane person.

I'm attaching a picture of the pile of pennies on my desk for added emphasis...