Penny-pinching misers!

Brits have a tendency to be petty and miserly. This has happened to me on at least  three occasions:

At a newsagent's I made a purchase of a few pounds and as I emptied my pockets I found that I was one penny short. As I continued fishing around in my pockets I put on a sympathetic face, expecting to hear "that's okay" or something similar as would surely happen in America...

Nothing. The woman (one of the owner's, I'm positive) just looked at me rigidly. It became a long, awkward moment until my wife finally happened to find a penny in the bottom of her handbag and saved the day.

Same thing happened another day at a Waitrose. One penny short and I had to give up one of my items. The checker gave me a slightly frightened look and told me she "couldn't". Does Waitrose really penalize an employee for helping out a customer to the tune of 1p? I hope not because the PR value is worth far more.

This has happened another time but I don't need to tell the whole story.

It's not like I'm putting out an attitude of expectation, although we all know that 9 out of 10 times in the U.S. (in my experience more like 100% of the time) they just let it go. Same goes in Spain, where I've been treated with extreme generosity.

What is it with the Brits? Of course no people are perfect but this isn't an admirable quality.

I'm sure you will hear a lot of anecdata about this, but why would you expect them to give you something for less than advertised? I've never had something waived away in the UK or the US, though in the US I have sometimes been able to use that "give a penny, get a penny" jar that people leave out at gas stations and the like.
I would imagine Waitrose frowns, full-stop, on not charging people as advertised. Plus, there may be an element of protectiveness in the policy: if you don't make one person pay full price, what do you do if the next person is 20p short?

I don't see what makes someone "miserly" when they advertise something at £X.XX and you're short. You have the option to not buy it, try and negotiate (unlikely with Waitrose as it's a large chain, possibly more likely at a newsagent), or come up with the cash.

Like Jennie, I've used the penny jar at gas stations once or twice, but have never gotten a "don't worry about it" sort of response. I'm sure that even 1p would add up pretty quickly if there was a policy that it really didn't matter, so companies would have no reason to fudge the price.

Brits have a tendency to be petty and miserly.

Do we? This is the first time I'm hearing it!

As for your 1p experience, I don't think it has anything at all to do with being "miserly." Shop tills are all computerised and the amount of money taken in has to be equal to the amount charged. Don't take it personally. I suppose the person working at the till could have given you a penny, but you can't expect them to have cash on them while working. Not to mention the fact that it's just not something they can start doing - those pennies add up. 

Why have you 3 times in recent memory, attempted to buy things for less money than you have, then accuse the other person of being miserly? Why don't you ensure you have enough money to pay for things before approaching the till?

If you work in a big store and your till is short, by even a few pence it is a disciplinary offense, if you were caught letting people off money it is a disciplinary offence. You can have a hundred customers an hour, if they all expected this treatment it would soon add up that is why it is something the stores take seriously, they are running a business. Where do they draw the line?

For me, asking a cashier to let you off money that you owe is putting them in an awkward position where they could lose their job - shame on you!

You can't expect a cashier to smile and let you off stealing from their store, and not paying for goods you want to purchase is just stealing.

I haven't been in the situation where I needed just one penny in either country, but I've had experiences in the US and UK where the store clerk didn't feel like making a mass of change they'd just eat the 1 cent or 1 pence.  I suppose it depends on how stringent their accounting is and how much static they'd take from the boss.

As for miserly behavior, I base the vast majority of my English stereotypes on my inlaws.  They can be frugal about things, but it's not that they're more frugal than I am, but that the things they choose not to spend money on are different than the things I choose not to spend money on.

For example, they drive old cheap cars, rarely do preventative maintenance on them, and when the car breaks down to the point where it's not economical to fix it, they just get another one.  In my family we buy new cars and take really good care of them until they have 100k miles on them, and then start looking for a replacement.  Neither way is necessarily better; just different.  

So to extrapolate my inlaws to the rest of the population of the UK, maybe it's not that everyone in England is cheap, but that the things they're cheap about are different than what the OP is used to.

p.s. To the OP: you may find people are more open to your opinions if you stay away from declarative sweeping generalizations like "Brits have a tendency to be petty and miserly".  It's like saying, "Americans are fat," or "Americans are loud".  It's not possible that all 60 million people in the UK are petty and miserly, and the ones who aren't (or people who are married to the ones who arent) might take offense.

I'm disappointed. I thought this was going to be a post with tips on how to be a miser or a penny-pinching miser meet up.

I'm disappointed. I thought this was going to be a post with tips on how to be a miser or a penny-pinching miser meet up.

I used to be a cashier in the States and would only let customers 'pass' on being a few cents short when I knew my till was a few cents over..

I find here people less likely to leave 'shrapnel' behind than they do in the States. I used to always leave 15 cents or less behind and just take the bills. Now, not so much.

DS works in retail (in US) and their policy really is "the customer is always right". For example, several times he's had customers returning items and wanting to qualify for a sale price that didn't apply when they bought the item -- and he has to allow it even though the difference is significantly more than a penny. But this retailer is the exception, I suspect.

Hi DavidO
  Interesting threads you've been starting and commenting on.  I think life,wherever we live, whatever we do, whatever our backgrounds, whatever we have experienced or felt and dealt with is all different.  You certainly bring up interesting discussion points, but definitely you will find a gazillion different opinions on everything.  We're mostly good debators on this forum and try not to get our backs up too much, but sweeping generalisations never go too far on here!

The only thing that is the same for everyone is that we're all mostly human.  More importantly, we need to remeber the motto : your mileage may vary 

I wouldn't expect someone to excuse me if I didn't have enough change to pay for my item in either the UK or the US.

I have worked as a cashier in the US, and if I did let someone get away without  paying the exact amount, I would have had to take the same amount of money out of my own pocket and put it in the till to avoid getting in trouble.

I don't see why you think you should be able to get away with paying less for an item than everyone else?

I could see if you honestly thought you had the exact change, and then after fishing through wallet/all your pockets you could not come up with one more penny.

But, don't most people carry around debit cards these days?

If I don't have enough cash for something, I just use my debit card. If the shop doesn't take debit cards, I just go to a cash machine and get cash out.

(Before I had a UK bank account, I paid for things with my US credit cards.)

With people carrying around so much plastic in their wallets, "not having enough cash on me" isn't much of an excuse anymore.

I'm disappointed. I thought this was going to be a post with tips on how to be a miser or a penny-pinching miser meet up.

Me too. lol 

I have been let off the odd penny because I can't do addition and it has been in the UK, but it was at the shop across the road that we went to at least once a day knew the staff. They would also let me off up to 50p knowing that I would be back the next day and pay it then. I've never had that in the states, only the odd time when they can't be bothered to do the change.

when you are dealing with employees at a job it really isn't fair to call then penny-pinching misers given they are doing a job and it's not their money.

Brits have a tendency to be petty and miserly. [...] What is it with the Brits?

You really shouldn't post like this.