Lane Accountability at work has been going on for a little over a month now and I must admit I've noticed a few positives, though I think they're all selfish.
For one, I've been finding a lot more 1978 dated coins to hoard. I have a water bottle jug I've been filling with coins bearing that date for over ten years now. It was intended to be a one year project but I just kept rolling it over. The idea was to accumulate my birth year coins for a year and then buy myself something with them for my birthday. The trouble was, it was less than $20. The idea of distilling a year's worth of effort into a music CD seemed depressing so I just kept accumulating.
After many years I had enough to warrant using the jug and I claimed that when it was full I'd use its value to go on a vacation or something. I estimate the value of the jug will be between $800 and $1,000 depending on what coins are found. Cents make up a little over half the total number of coins. Just yesterday I hit exactly 5000 of them. And while that number sounds impressive, it means only $50 worth of pennies. The remaining nickels, dimes, quarters, and halves make up the other roughly 5000 coins with 1978 halves being the least represented because that was a low production year.
The thing is, when I had my own till, I was giving out my unwanted half dollars in change which limited how many quarters I could go through. A good week would maybe net me three or four 1978 quarters. Now I get a new till every night. Two in fact because after "till exchange" we need to start on a fresh till. My 1978 quarter haul has been double, sometimes triple, what I've been getting so Lane Accountability is improving the value of my 1978-dated coin jug.
And to be honest, knowing me...the likely thing which will happen when that jug fills is I will end up buying a second one and begin filling that. Actually I'll probably separate the cents from the other coins and wonder which jug will fill up first. I'm assuming the cent is on life-support so it'd also be a race against time :-)
I've already gotten two silver dimes - both out in the open (i.e. not from sealed rolls) and both Roosevelts but at least I know silver is still possible. I've even gotten a 1950-D series $10 Federal Reserve Note from one of my daily tills. I imagine any non-Presidential coins will have to come from sealed rolls because I think even non-collectors tend to hold on to a Buffalo nickel or Mercury dime as a curiosity when they see one.
But then again, the tills are proven not by hand-counting but by weighing them so a buried non-Presidential coin could easily go unnoticed. Same thing with Silver Certificates, United States Notes, and God-willing, a Gold Certificate. Possible bonus...
The other joy of Lane Accountability is that it embodies the Tragedy of the Commons which, when it comes to cashiering, is a godsend. Now when a customer pays me with fifty or more dollar bills, I don't have to manipulate my change-giving to draw them down: that's the next cashier's problem. Messy coupon bag? Fuck it (and I say that while I use the claim of facing the money in a "messy till" as an excuse to search through its coins every day).
Plus I can open change rolls unnecessarily and without guilt on the fresh till because I know the coins will get used up throughout the day.
Basically Lane Accountability has the potential to aid my coin collecting habit. However, I won't be entirely convinced of this until I finally start getting some non-Presidential coins in my daily hauls.
I still find this system to be cumbersome and the timing of till exchange interrupts the flow of the evening. It doesn't help that my panicky, 800 lb. gorilla of a co-worker insists on waiting until after till exchange before I go on lunch even though it is totally unnecessary to wait for that. All it does is make me start my overnight work a half-hour later.
Silver linings to every dark cloud...
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