Correct Change or Else!

Here's what you see in the United States every now and then, a penny or a quarter on the ground.  Here's what you see in Israel, a lot of litter for the Ethiopian Jews to clean up but never a shekel or even a argot.

United States bills and coins are pretty straight forward:  you have your bills with the smallest being one dollar, and you have your coinage the smallest component being the penny.  Easy.

Instead of the dollar, Israel uses the shekel.  Like the dollar, the shekel will break down into smaller components.  You have the half shekel and the argot.  An argot is 1/10th of a shekel.  In other words 10 argot make up one shekel.  There's a small problem with this.

Israel has a 16% value-add or sales tax on all merchandise.  However, unlike in the US, the tax is not tagged on at the point of sale the tax is included in the price.  So if something is 50-shekels, that's how much you will pay, not 50 plus 16%.  Like in the US, instead of pricing something at an even $10, it will be priced at $9.99.  Fresh produce in particular will be priced at something like 4.99 per pound and then you have a pound an some ounces so the prices comes to 5.78.  Well, there is no coinage to give exact change for odd amounts.  If I hand over 6 shekels the cashier would only give back two argot, and I short 2/100's of a shekel.  Not a big deal, but over time it adds up in favor of the stores.  

Unlike the US dollar bill, the shekel itself is a coin about the size of a dime.  The worthless half-shekel and argot are bigger coins than the shekel.  The smallest bill is worth 20-shekels and other bills come in denominations of 50, 100, and 200.  Other coins are the 2, 5 and 10-shekel coins.  

Cashiers, for some reason hate to give change.  They hate it.  At the grocery some they get really irritated when he presents a bill and he doesn't have correct change.  So David always gives them bills so they have to make change.

What's the big deal about making change?  When we went to Tel Aviv, the round-trip ticket cost 110-shekels.  He handed the cashier a 200, and she wanted something else, and he shook his head.  She pulled out the 90-shekels in change, saw that he had a 20-shekel bill.  Made him give her the 20 so she could put the 90-shekels back and give him a 100-shekel bill and a 10-shekel coin.  

Go figure.