I used to have a tiny little jelly jar, but I filled it, so now they just sort of accumulate in piles. A quick scan of the apartment just now turned up 30 of the damn things. I wish I was kidding. I must have 400 or so, total.

Just think about that. I have 400 pennies, kept for NO reason other than they have a different design on the back.

I don't know if they're worth anything. I've scanned coin collecting sites a few times. There are a few years that are genuinely rare, but I don't know if I have any of them. There's only so long that I can spend staring at tiny little dates and sorting into piles by decade before my brain rebels at the entire project. I found one from 1919 once. It's in the jar somewhere.

At all my previous jobs, I had access to the cash register. Once or twice a week, I'd be bored enough to go through whatever pennies were in the drawer. I'd find two, maybe three wheat pennies in an average week.

At Fazuul, there are FOUR registers. There are enough transactions taking place each day that 4-5 rolls of pennies will be opened in each drawer. As a manager, I count each drawer at the beginning and end of each shift. If a drawer changes cashiers halfway through a shift, it has to be counted. It's really a little alarming, the number of wheat pennies I find these days. I find at least one almost every day.

New Salaried Guy caught me setting a penny aside in the course of my drawer counting the other day. I assured him that I always replace the pennies I steal from the "take a penny" cup on the counter. (Cashiers are confused and frightened by drawers that don't start at exactly $150. They're all told that they are accountable for any money missing at the end of the shift, so if the drawer isn't right at the start, they need to know why. There's a line out the door, and the cashier is refusing to take orders, because her drawer only had $149.97. Ooh, the mornings I've spent, scrounging the office for loose change because the night manager doesn't know how to count, and the drawers are all off by a few cents. But I digress.)

NSG has started saving wheat pennies for me now too. I don't know why, but that just makes the whole thing seem creepy. It was just a harmless obsession. Now, it's a team effort. It's just a matter of time before EVERYONE knows. I'll be The Penny Girl.

Is it weird that I'm making a point out of occasionally dumping whatever normal pennies are in my coat pockets into the cup, just so there's absolutely no chance of this little neurosis of mine being seen as stealing in any way? Or, is the truly weird part that I've invested enough thought into this that the idea would even cross my mind?
***
When the new quarters started, I collected them, of course. At last, I could have a coin obsession that other people understood. Quarters are laundry, though. I kept looking at my nice little folder of quarters (one from each mint, even!) and thinking about how many better uses I could find for $3.75. That's serious money, you know.

So, I sympathize with the people who ask me to look through my drawer for an Ohio quarter (No really, I'll give you another quarter instead. Why don't you open up that new roll? Maybe there's an Ohio in there.) but I do consider them kind of freakish. Wheat pennies are where it's at.

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