Spare change adds up, but getting it turned into cash can come at a cost.

When one patron tried to cash in his savings jar, he found himself caught in a game of patience, policy, and a very annoyed bank teller.

You’ll want to read on for this one!

My Bank Try to Rob Me of My Hard-Earned Money

Back in the early 2000s, I was collecting all my change in one of those big plastic water jugs for water dispensers.

I had it about 60% full and needed to cash them in to make ends meet, so I lugged this thing into my local bank.

But this bank had very particular rules about cashing coins.

Now, I had learned the hard way prior to this that the bank would not accept pre-rolled coins.

They told me there was no way to verify that the rolls contained actual coins and that they would have to rip every one of them open to check.

After the explanation, it made sense, but it was kind of frustrating since I had spent the money and time rolling all these coins up, thinking I was helping them out.

So the customer made sure they followed instructions this time.

So this time, I kept them all loose in the jug.

I also knew they had one of those coin-counting machines because I had seen them use it the last time, and it made light work of all the coins they had unwrapped from the rolls.

But it had been a few years since I last did this, so here I was, waiting in line for the next available teller with my jug of loose change, probably weighing 40–50 lbs.

But the teller wasn’t going to make this easy.

When my turn came, I waddled the jug up to the base of the teller desk and told them I wanted to cash it in.

This is when they informed me that they charged something like a 10% fee to count the change.

This didn’t add up to the customer at all.

I turned my head to the right, where there was a small room, and sure enough, that same coin-counting machine was sitting in there.

I said, “You aren’t counting it, you’re just pouring it into that machine, and it’ll count it for you.”

The two went back and forth.

They simply replied, “It’s just our policy, sir.”

I then said, “You’re my bank. Isn’t that a service you’re supposed to provide to me?”

And they said, “We charge the same rate for everyone.”

After some clarification, the malicious compliance plot was now set into motion.

So I asked how much change they would take without charging me the fee, and they said, “$50.”

I knelt down, tipped the jug over, and poured as much of it into my hand as possible, placing a couple of handfuls worth onto the counter.

Looking perturbed, she counted it all by hand and gave me maybe $22 and some change.

Now time to get back in line.

I put it into my wallet, grabbed my jug, and dragged it to the back of the line behind two other customers.

When it was my turn again, I waddled up there, knelt down, and placed a couple of handfuls of coins on the high counter.

The customer now has the teller’s full attention.

When I stood back up, you could tell she was pretty perturbed about what I was doing, and eventually, she just gave in.

She told me to bring the jug over to the swinging door at the end of the desk, and with the help of another teller, they started pouring it into the coin machine.

The customer is on high alert now and very careful to not get scanned.

I made a point to tell them that I knew almost to the cent how much was in there, so they shouldn’t try to pull any fast ones on me.

About ten minutes later, the machine had chewed through all the coins, and the total came to within a few bucks of my own count.

I might have had a handful of Canadian coins in there or some slight miscount due to worn coins.

After all that effort, they did make a good chunk of change.

I remember it ended up being over $1,000 in pocket change, but I can’t recall the actual total.

That was the last time I saved coins.

Nowadays, I hear most banks won’t do this at all and will just refer you to those coin-counting machines you see at hardware stores or Walmart that rob you of a large percentage of the total.

This person learned that perhaps saving coins was more trouble than it was worth, but at least they didn’t let themselves get cheated.

Reddit is sure to get a kick out of this one.

Some banks have better systems than others.

They do things a bit better in Europe, according to this commenter.

Arbitrary rules are no match for a person who’s determined to get their way.

Apparently cashing in change is painful no matter where you go.

It turns out the real cost of cashing in coins wasn’t the fee, it was the teller’s patience.

And that’s how you turn cents into nonsense.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.