Why No Small Change May Be a Big Change

I guess I always understood the run on everything Clorox by crazy grocery store customers when we thought that the Covid-19 virus was transmitted mainly through contact with contaminated surfaces. Cleanliness has always been next to godliness in my book, and who could fault anyone for wanting to make sure that they had a sufficient stockpile of the good stuff, which would hopefully protect them and their families from the bad stuff. As long as you didn’t drink it.

Just to be clear, I never attributed that massive interest in liquid bleach–even for a moment–to the mad ravings of the moron then in the White House or to the protestations of the pillow people–although I would have been first in line for the privilege of watching the soon-to-be ex-prez down a Clorox cocktail or two with a chaser of hydroxychloroquine. As the old saying goes, “I’d buy him a drink, but I wouldn’t lend him any money.”

The consumer panic around toilet paper and the apparent need to empty the nation’s shelves of every sheet of Charmin was a little more inexplicable. Were that many conference calls really likely to move from the boardroom to the bathroom? Was Dad gonna double down on his “quiet time” reading in the toilet? Speaking of which, when advice columnist Ann Landers reigned over America’s manners, she’d receive tons of mail about disputes between husbands and wives about which way the toilet paper roll should be mounted and rotated. Now that’s something really worth worrying about. Not empty shelves at the grocery store. Of course, unless you want to regularly repaint the wall under the roller, we all know that hanging the loose edge on the outside is best.

From the very outset, there was absolutely no serious prospect of grocery stores and warehouses shutting down, or the traditional supply chains suddenly collapsing. And frankly, even if they did for a moment or two, everyone knew that Amazon would leap at the massive logistics opportunity and acquire millions of new customers by shipping you all the 2-Ply Quilted Northern you needed. Why there was such a scramble for TP will always be a mystery to me.

But the most intriguing question of all was how in the world the world (and especially the banks) ran out of change? One of the privations of the pandemic was, apparently, pennies. Pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters seemed to dry up and disappear virtually overnight, and, all of a sudden, everything was about exact change, charity donations, and/or rounding up. Was this even a real thing or another crafty conspiracy to finally get rid of those wretched and filthy pennies, the worst kind of pocket litter? And, more important, where exactly did the little devils go?

This isn’t a purely rhetorical question. It’s not like “Where does your lap go when you stand up?” It’s actually difficult to get a straight answer because the majority of the explanations offered by banks and the media don’t really make much sense. Were copper pennies part of the Covid-19 conspiracy? Were dimes and quarters silver spreaders? It’s not like people were dining on their dimes or suddenly collecting quarters. If the problem is that there aren’t enough coins in circulation because people aren’t out there spending their change to buy and sell things, then who really cares, because you wouldn’t need the coins anyway to support the non-existent transactions and make tons of change for the shoppers.

If all the brave souls actually out in the stores were using credit cards rather than cash, then it’s not a problem at all. In fact, one of the most common sights in the midst of the pandemic is store signs saying that they are temporarily not accepting cash. Sadly, this may have had more to do with fears about being robbed than about their ability to make correct change, but the end result is the same. They didn’t need your lousy nickels anyway.

So, the mystery remains, and it may be one of the lasting legacies of the pandemic. Maybe pennies are about to go the way of postcards (remember those little things), autographs (before selfies), ashtrays on every table, coin-operated parking meters, match books covered with logos and advertising inside, Yellow Pages, and, dare I say it, even business cards? A year or two from now, if your phone doesn’t automatically share your contact info with anyone you choose, you’ll probably have a QR code tattooed on your forehead to accomplish the same thing.

Among the lasting pandemic effects we’re seeing is that traditional objects and ordinary behaviors are starting to disappear right and left–sometimes for good and sometimes good riddance. Even today, there are customers not worth keeping, but you want to make those choices and ask that age-old question: How can I miss you if you won’t leave? The problem is that, at the speed the world is moving today, it’s not entirely clear that we understand why these things are happening. We want things to happen for us in a good way and not to us because we were standing still and not anticipating and reacting to the ongoing changes. Adapting your operations to new concerns and approaches–whether it’s fewer coins and cashless transactions, touchless interactions and voice commands, or drive-throughs and locker pick-ups in lieu of in-store visits–is going to be critical to keeping your customers coming back and staying happy.