An Apple A Day Only Counts If You Can Pay

I had a feeling as I posted yesterday's blog that there was an additional event from the week that I had forgotten to mention - and earlier today I remembered exactly what it was.

On Tuesday I went for a brief walk at lunch and stopped to buy an apple from a newsagents / convenience store on the corner nearby. I got to the counter, purchase in hand, and then when reaching into my pocket discovered I had no change to pay for a 35p apple - a mere 9p. Then when looking into my wallet, the annoyance was that I had no notes either. I offered to pay on my card for the amusing amount of 35p only to be told there was a minimum purchase of £2 required. So I left the shop without an apple.

A later discussion made me realise that the ideal approach is to restore bartering into common usage. While I had no legal tender in my wallet, I had several things of arguably more value than the 35p apple. I had an IOU from the tramlink for 80p which was printed from a machine that lacked change and has remained in my wallet unclaimed a year and three quarters later. I had a 7/9ths full loyalty card from Cafe Nero, which therefore was worth at the very least 7/9th of an expensive coffee, or even a cheap coffee (for those of you unfamiliar, nine stamps and you get the tenth coffee free). If the cheapest coffee is around £1.80 my 77.7% full card was surely worth £1.40 at the very least.

But instead none of these offers were made, none were redeemed and they were one apple better off and several potentially beneficial deals worse off as a result.