Making Change

Vanessa and I are now officially annoyed at the frequency of time that people don´t have change for even reasonably sized bills. For instance, is giving a 5 when it costs 3 too much to ask? Yet again and again people we end up paying want as close to exact change as possible. I noticed this previously in Chile, but for some reason it seems worse in some of these other countries we´ve been to.

A few hypotheses:

a) the high possibility of theft requires keeping as little change on hand as possible

b) in the US we decry month-to-month budgeters, but in developing countries it is often day-to-day, so they have to begin with an empty drawer each day.

c) They are working with such tight funds that keeping a series of reserves on hand for change is a costly endeavor equivalent to lending money to nobody.

d) a cultural effect. If everyone doesn´t want to change large bills, then people don´t want to accept them for fear they won´t be able to spend them. This cycle of course would perpetuate itself.

e) storeowners want to make you buy more things form their store.

I believe all of these play a role at varying times. I wonder if there´s a pattern that richer countries have less and less of this problem.