Young people have no idea …

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I think this kind of thing just falls into "did you ever have to?" The cashier will certainly learn change when they need to. When someone like you points it out, they see and learn it. If you've never seen a rotary phone, is it obvious? The cashier might be great at math but never ever saw cash given in that way. Sometimes being shown once, engages the person.

 

Welcome to the Old Guy Club, Batman!

 

Of course, I’m there with you — although my old man rants tend to be about snow shoveling!

 

The .01 thing reminds me of a similar situation with change confusing a kid at a coffee shop. I handed the cashier $20.13 for something that cost $4.13. She was totally confused because she didn’t seem to understand the change was money - she didn’t know what to do with it. Eventually, I had to tell her that the dime and three pennies added up to 13 cents and she seemed dubious. I got my $16 change but I don’t think she was sure about the whole thing.

 

I've never been a homeowner until the past few years, so my perspective is different on this. And we don't have a lawn. I've always been perplexed by folks worrying about how their neighbor's lawn looks. It's not like the house itself is boarded up. Are you telling me a neighbor's unmowed lawn is going to drop property values that much?

 

Yes. This is the sort of thing I run across all the time. Paying with cash -- and especially coins -- is like speaking a foreign language.

Several years ago I was flying somewhere and tried to pay a checked bag fee in cash. It was like the entire airport came to a screeching halt as people tried to figure out 1) why someone would ever even think of doing that, 2) if it was even possible and 3) how to do it.

 

Looking up how to drive to a place in Hyannis for dinner this week I was struck by vivid memories of my old Arrow book of street maps of every Massachusetts city and town, all 382 of 'em. Every reporter in the state had that book in the back seats of their cars (too thick for glove compartment). Many's the high school game I would have missed without it.

 

If they're a little late getting to it, it's not a big deal. We've all been there. When it's a chronic problem, it becomes a neighborhood eyesore. In our neck of the woods, it could also invite unwanted critters, like snakes and possums, to take up residence. I'm not normally going to take my mower three houses away to cut somebody's lawn, but I might tsk-tsk it as trashy.

In this case, it was both an aesthetic thing and an annoyance to me personally.
That 2 1/2-foot wide strip was in between two freshly-cut yards, so it looked ugly as hell. If I hadn't cut the other side the day before and there was some shag on it, it wouldn't have bothered me as much. I would've just marveled at the laziness. The teenager's yard goes up to the neighbor's concrete driveway, so there is a clear visual reference point on where you would think to stop cutting. He stopped just short of that when it would've taken another 5 or 10 minutes (it was maybe three passes with the mower) to finish it.
One of the reasons I started cutting our neighbor's yard was because when I cut in between our houses and followed that line all the way to the street, I realized I was cutting about 1/3 of it anyway. I could leave it in kind of an ugly state, or take another 10-15 minutes, be a good neighbor, and do the rest of it to even it off.

The personal annoyance was that, since I cut the other side of our neighbor's yard and it was obvious the teenager wasn't coming back to finish the job, I felt obligated to pull out my mower and do it myself. It'll be two or three weeks before I cut grass again. Leaving a strip of ugly shin-high grass was not an option in my OCD-infected world.

 

The yard thing is definitely going to be an interesting item moving forward. Maybe it has always been a generational thing, but I feel the younger generations (and why maybe this is here in the first place) look at yards and go, why? There is no question landscaping can take a lot of unnecessary resources.

I like my yard and I like it looking nice, but my oldest especially looks at it and goes, why are you wasting water and fuel and everything else on something like that? Let the outdoors be kind of thing and stop wasting and polluting. And I don't think he is alone in his thoughts.

He doesn't fight with me, but he has basically asked me why do you bother with this on more than one occasion.

 

Funny story, was in DC last fall and while picking up the rental car I asked if there were any driving rules in the area that were "different" - the guy helping me said "no, just regular stuff." I said, because in Oregon you can't pump your own gas. Just then the other two clerks who were busy on their phone and seemingly in their own world looked up and said "You can't pump your own gas!!!!???"

Well, guess what? The state just authorized self-serve at all gas stations now, but for no more than half of the pumps.

so, it's been years. How do you do it again?

I kid, I kid.

 

My go-to station is going to remain full-serve. And they are not going to let customers pump their own gas, I guess that's one of the options in the new law.

Batman, where I live, high grass = higher pollen, which sucks. Lots of rentals in Microville because of the student population, and their lawns almost always look like shit because of some lazy-ass landlord.

This week was the first in town without students. Having 20K people and 7K cars bug out is wonderful. I'll be ready for them to return again come September, but getting the town back for 2-3 months rocks.