No One Ever Has Change!

This seems like a random and small thing that you would not notice or complain about, but it is very evident once you live here for a while that no one ever has any exact change for financial transactions!

Change is essential to every day life, but apparently not in Colombia. In the U.S., when you purchase something you usually get exact change back for large bills. This usually never seems to be a problem since stores stock up on change at the beginning of the day. However, this concpet of ¨preparing for something inevitable¨ is not common sense here.

Do you have change for a $20,000 bill?

Instead, every day Colombians constantly complain about how they don´t have enough change. Whenever you buy something and pass over a large bill, you will immediatly hear, ¨¡¿No tienes mas suelto?!¨. This means, ¨Don´t you have any smaller change to pay with?!¨. I always say ¨No!¨ - even if I do have change. Since when is it the customer´s responsibility to have exact change! It has always been the store clerk´s responsibility to prepare enough change to last through a day of transactions - at least in the United States.

Not only is is an inconvience that sometimes can take up to an extra 15 minutes for someone to locate change, but most of the time the clerk (or taxi drivers especially) are just lying. They have change, they just don´t want to give it to you!

Another thing is that if you don´t have change they get all pissy and just hand you over whatever they have. This means that sometime you end up losing money just because the clerk does not have enough chance. If they are going to do this, shouldn´t it be the other way around? As in, the loss should go to the clerk, not the client. I really do not understand this logic nor why people don{t prepare their businesses for this ahead of time.