Sign of the times... / What do you do when you see a quarter on the ground?

[leapinlew]

My wife and I was at the show last night to see Halloween ($9.50!). So we were in a pretty long line to buy tickets, and of course there were also a lot of teenagers, pre-teens and the usual predators of teens and pre-teens. We got to the front of the line when the kid (18-20yrs. old) in front of us bought his tickets, paid with a $10 and then dropped his change. 2 quarters roll onto the pavement where there are about 3 dozen teenie bopper onlookers. 1 quarter rolls into the crowd never to be seen again, but another quarter lands pretty much at the feet of the kid who dropped it. The kid who dropped the quarters briefly looked down and then walked on leaving it.

I look at the quarter and... maybe it's a throwback to my arcade days, but I can't leave a quarter laying on the ground. That quarter symbolizes 30 seconds to 30 minutes of entertainment (30 seconds being robotron or defender and 30 minutes being Mario Bros. or Galaga).

I pick the quarter up, walk in the movie theater and find every game in the place is at least 75 cents to play. Irony I suppose, but for some reason the kid not picking up his quarter stuck with me.

What would you guys do in the same situation? Do you pickup a discarded quarter in front of a few dozen strangers?

I did. I could care less what a bunch of kids wearing $40 t-shirts (but too poor to buy a $10 belt) think. Also, GET OFF MY LAWN.

[shmokes]

I'll pick up a nickel if I see one lying on the ground.  Not pennies, though.  And I'm still under 30.

Also, you couldn't care less, means that you don't care.  A person who could care less is a person who cares, at least a little bit, possibly a great deal.  It doesn't make any sense the way you say it.

[pointdablame]

uh oh, watch out....






Oh, and I'd totally pick up the quarter.  That's most likely due to the fact that any stray thought I have is in regards to me getting money to pay off my student loans 

[Jeff AMN]

I have my cabs to accept quarters...so I would have pounced! 

Actually, I don't even pass pennies by. When I cashed in my change bottle last year and it was over $400, every little bit went into building that up.

[leapinlew]

Not pennies, though.  And I'm still under 30.

These are incomplete/fragmented sentences. They confuse the reader.

F

[RayB]

I would leave the quarter.
And belts are $40 too dude.

GET OFF YOUR LAWN!  errr...

[SavannahLion]

I've read somewhere that if Bill Gates dropped a $100 bill, it wouldn't be worth his time to pick it up.

When I read that, I followed Gates around for a week. Then I was arrested on stalking charges 

In any case, I would pick the quarter up. Even pennies. That's just me, my father was a penny pincher, but he wasn't good enough to squeeze more than a nickel out of them. In the garage, I have one of those water bottles filled with coinage from the last ten years. Like a dumbshit, it didn't occur to me how heavy the thing would be to move, so I have no idea what to do with it. I started a new jar though, so in another ten years I'll have a another unmovable water bottle in the garage. 

[tophatne1]

Would you believe my brother goes though his pockets at the end of the day and takes all the pennies out of his change and throws them straight into the garbage. No joke. He has for years. We're talking sometimes 10-20 cents because he only deals with cash when he's buying things. That to me is a lot worse than not picking them up.
Ironically, he just filed bankruptcy in June.

In the 80's I had a friend who was one of those spoiled kids that got at least a $20 bill every time he left the house. He acted like change wasn't real money. (Including the silver coins and quarters!) If money wasn't paper he had no use for it. He would just throw his change around his room, in his locker, wherever. I of course never had any money, so to see him with $100's in quarters laying everywhere was the craziest thing.

Every so often some of the change ended up in my overnight bag. The money usually went straight into the Centipede at the pizza place near my house or into cases of M.U.S.C.L.E figures.

I did confess this to him a few years ago and he laughed. He told me "that's funny as hell! I never knew cause I didn't care about change!" Given his reaction I'd say my conscience is clean now.

[Apollo]

I'd leave the quarter lying there, I can't spend your weird foreign currency in my country.

[SavannahLion]

In the 80's I had a friend who was one of those spoiled kids that got at least a $20 bill every time he left the house. He acted like change wasn't real money. (Including the silver coins and quarters!) If money wasn't paper he had no use for it. He would just throw his change around his room, in his locker, wherever. I of course never had any money, so to see him with $100's in quarters laying everywhere was the craziest thing.

God, that drove me ape ---Cleveland steamer---. I had a friend who was like that. He was given $20 just to take the trash out one day. That was on top of his $100 a week allowance. His father was this fat lazy ass who couldn't be bothered to do the work. The kid would turn around and spend at least half that on candy.

By the time we both turned 17, he was such an ---uvula---. It was impossible to even attempt to hang out with him unless you could match him dollar for dollar on his spending habits. He was eventually arrested for stealing money from his father's work (which his father was also arrested for). He didn't just steal a bundle of bills, he stole whole ---smurfing--- bags of money. On slow days, he would forge checks. He would steal blank company checks then attempt to cash them at the company bank. Enough that it bought him a brand new 4x4 with enough bling to cause blindness.

Unlike your friend, I've never really talked to him since.

[Crowquill]

I pick up quarters without hesitation. Dimes and nickels too. I pick up pennies if I one within easy reach, but I'm not sure they're worth chasing down.

[genesim]

My wife and I was at the show last night to see Halloween ($9.50!).

But there is your real problem...that is money you will never get back for that piece of crap.   I hated that remake!

[danny_galaga]

I'd leave the quarter lying there, I can't spend your weird foreign currency in my country.

i would give it to a friends kid. kids love foreign coins, and actually so do i (",)

[Joystick Jerk]

I'd leave it. Sure, arcade games cost 25c in 1985, but it's not 1985 anymore. I don't need extra change sitting in my pocket that I'll likely never use. Hell, up here in Canada,  I probably wouldn't even bother picking up a Loonie on the ground. Again, just more change I don't need since I pay for everything with a debit card.

[vorghagen]

If I was the one who dropped it:
It would depend solely on how much junk food and drinks I had in my hands. If I needed to either put something down or shuffle it to my other hand in order to pick it up, that coin is staying on the floor.

If I was the next guy in line:
I'd ignore it until AFTER I'd finalised my own purchase at the counter, then if no-one else had picked it up - see above.

As for general loose change, for the better part of a year at the end of each day I'd throw all my loose change into an old backpack in the corner of my room. Never realised how much I was putting in until I tried to move it one day and couldn't lift it up. A trip to the bank and one very annoyed cashier later I had an extra $1345.45 to play with. 
That backpack went straight back into the corner, and there it shall stay until I can't lift it again. Not a bad way to save money.

[Malenko]

not only would I have picked up the quarter at his feet, I would have chased down the other one in the crowd.



$9.50 for a movie? you must have been there at 10am on a Wednesday, cause movies around here are $15.50...don't get me started on the pop corn.