An assistant manager was left frustrated when his Gen Z coworkers wrongly declared a customer's money as fake.
Sam, 22, who gave his first name only, is an assistant manager at a frozen yogurt shop in Florida and recently shared a frustrating work moment with Reddit's r/mildlyinfuriating sub.
In a post shared on December 15 with 15,000 upvotes, Sam wrote via his account u/PhillipEngMBTA: "These bills confiscated by teen cashiers and deemed 'counterfeit.'"
"I shed a tear because of the sharpie they scrawled onto the bills," he added — alongside a photo of a very real 10 and 5-dollar bill, with the words; "FAKE" and "Fake do not accept" written across them.
Sam told Newsweek he had to "sternly" explain to the teenage employees that the bills were "just old, not counterfeit."
"The bills are pre-1999 as far as dating goes, so at least 25-30 years old," he explained, meaning they were older than the employees and Sam himself. "The $5 is even older, maybe from the 60s."
He acknowledged that the teens would likely be unused to cash, thanks to the prevalence of cards and apps, and said he himself "rarely" uses cash.
"It's a digital world nowadays, so I would suspect that to be one reason [the young employees thought the bills were fake]."
"Another reason is that we just should've shown the kids what all bills people might pay with would look like since currency has changed in design a few times over the last 30 years."
The younger portion of Gen Z, the generation born between 1997 and 2012, grew up with digital payments and cashless transactions, and a 2024 Talker Research poll found that almost 30 percent of Gen Z respondents avoided carrying cash as they feared it could be stolen.
The poll also revealed that 33 percent of Gen Z respondents feared they could accidentally lose cash. A third stated they carry cash frequently.
Reddit users shared their own stories on Sam's post, one commenter recalling once using a $2 bill in a store that the cashier thought was fake. "The manager sighed and had to explain that $2 bills are real. Just not very common," they wrote.
Another wrote they once had a $100 bill that a cashier thought was fake and wrote on it with a market.
"Took a closer look, it was from 1950, very crisp and good condition; not fake," they wrote. "From what I could tell, it'd be worth $200 if not for that cashier scribbling all over it."
And as one Redditor put it: "Always amazes me on the currency subs when people question the bills that we all USED to use... god I'm old."
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