Some days I'm outraged by big injustices. Some days I'm annoyed by the most petty of complaints. Today it's the latter... but there's a bigger injustice to be seen within.
When Canada abolished the penny there were some straightforward guidelines published for how cash transactions could be handled. They followed sound mathematical principles of simple rounding. 1 or 2 cents round down to nothing, 3 or 4 cents round up to a nickle. All else being equal, people would be no better or worse off. Some people might game the system a little, doing the calculation and then deciding to pay with plastic if it saved them a penny or two. With any luck they would get buried in credit card fees. But for most people, both customers and businesses, it would balance out.
McDonalds doesn't want to go along with this. If there's a penny to be taken, they'll take it. They don't round down! If your drink costs 2.01, you'd better have saved a penny from the before times, because otherwise you're out 5 cents. And it's not like they have pennies to make change with... if your sandwich comes to 2.99, you pay three dollars and get nothing back.
No one person is terribly inconvenienced by this on any particular day. But scamming people out of, on average, two cents per cash transaction... McDonalds must be pocketing millions from this. A hidden fee for using cash, on the backs of the people least able to afford it, calculated to be in amounts small enough that nobody can make a legal claim.
Yeah, I'm feeling petty today. But this looks suspiciously like a big injustice.
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