Male ignorance

My fiancée is a competent, clear-thinking woman...generally.  Sometimes, however, she makes a headscratching decision or two.  Today was one of those days.

Tomorrow we're having a garage sale.  In the general scheme of things this isn't a big deal.  We've been working hard to get rid of things, clean up the sales area and mark the items for sale with prices.  There are a couple of loose ends that we'll tie up tonight on that front.  But one thing remained for which I volunteered, with some reservations, was to get the change for the sale from our bank.

Having very little experience with garage sales, I'm not exactly sure how to divide up $100 over coins and bills.  How many $5s should I get?  Will I have enough dimes?  Quarters?  But since I went to a bank, I was sure they must have dealt with this question before, so I wasn't too concerned.

Imagine then my disappointment when I saw behind the teller's window two young men and a young Indian woman.  I'm not sure how many Indians have garage sales since, when driving by sales in our neighborhood, I rarely see any Indians either hosting the sales or attending them.  But I immediately realized I was in trouble.

After filling out the withdrawal slip, I approached the teller and asked the three tellers for their input.  I thought for sure one of them had dealt with this issue before.  My disappointment turned into surprise when they responded in unison that they hadn't dealt with such an issue before.

We don't get too many men in here asking for change for garage sales, the older man said.

But you do get women in here, right? I replied.

Yeah, but they all know what they're doing.

That whooshing sound you just heard was my ego being deflated.

I suggested to them that they might want to have some package ready for other errant men who were tasked with obtaining the right amount of change for a garage sale.  Falling back on my masculinity didn't help, though.  I helpfully suggested to the older man that they develop something similar to the Two-Point Conversion Card -- http://www.footballcommentary.com/twoptchart.htm -- or the Draft Pick Value Chart -- http://www.draftcountdown.com/features/Value-Chart.php/ -- for garage sale change, but my suggestion fell on deaf ears -- and blank stares; neither man had ever heard of such things.  I even went so far as to throw in the idea that it might be a means to a promotion that they could circulate throughout the bank's system, but they scoffed at the idea.

My last resort was to have them sign the envelope into which they put the agreed upon amount of bills, something I could show my fiancée later as evidence that it was a group effort to get the change in the denominations I was bringing to the garage sale.  Not a chance.  As unsavvy as the men were about other male-centric things, they were that much savvier when it came to accepting responsibility -- even collaterally and without any chance to be held accountable -- for the denominations.

The Indian woman played it coy the whole time and let the three of us wallow in our male ignorance.

Tomorrow may or may not be a success.  We have change to make change.  I just hope it's in the right amounts in the right denominations.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles