Food Court

At the food court Sunday, I wanted to pay with a twenty so I'd get change back. I use the vending machine at work sometimes during the week, and I only had three one-dollar bills. When I handed her my twenty, the lady at the Asian food stand saw my ones and called me out. She asked me to give her a one so she could give me $15 back. I told her I wanted to break the twenty, but she insisted, holding back my change. So what could I do?

Granted, this woman could possibly be native to another country, where this kind of thing is acceptable, but I didn't like it. If I have a whole wad of ones and I want to pay with a twenty, it's a free country, and I should be able to.

(An aside--this brings to mind when I used to get a paycheck in the mail, rather than direct deposit, and would get twenty ones back from my deposit every two weeks. Some of the tellers would look at me weird or make comments thinking they knew where I was going with them. It never seemed to occur to them that I was a large man who needed to maintain his body weight with the at-that-time daily trips to the vending machine.)

The whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth. Fortunately, the food didn't.