Of course it’s Texas. “Ah done never heard o’ none two doller bee-yill. Thet there’s gotta be counterfee-it. Ahm gonna git me a permotion fer this’n - yee-haw.”
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A long long time ago, I used to work in a fast food restaurant (or two, who can say for sure 
). But definitely not in Texas. Every so often someone would bring in a $2 bill. If I took it, no big deal. If someone else got the bill, folks reacted in dramatic ways. Not to the level of calling the cops (I don’t think any of us were the snitching sort).
I don’t know how it is everywhere else in the U.S. but it’s definitely not just Texas that’s largely unaware of the $2 bill.
As far as I can tell, it’s just like anything else. If it doesn’t happen often, a lot of people won’t know about it. Or will forget even if they do.
Hell, I hear stories (plausible ones; anecdote =/= data disclaimer) a few times a year about cops who don’t know some of the basic traffic laws particularly well.
The underlying causes aren’t a Texas thing. And I’m not bringing that up to defend Texas. If we cordon Texas off and pretend a bigger problem is just a Texas problem, it’s easy to lose sight of the same types of failings in ourselves.
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Pretty sure it’s an education problem.
If you compare the textbooks used in Texas schools with the textbooks Texas forces everyone else to use you notice a difference pretty quickly.
Hint: The ones a lot of Texas schools use reference “the war of northern aggression” and have phrases like “the average size of the negro skull indicates…”
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In the late 19th century they were also used to pay for, uh, “services” in brothels. Those two associations led to a lot of people refusing to spend $2 bills because they were afraid the recipient would think they’d been indulging in the races or the “fillies”.
They’re definitely not worthless, but you have to go to Germany to exchange them. The Bundesbank has said it will let people convert DM to euros without any time limit.The rate is roughly 2 DM = €1.
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John Oliver’s figures are correct, per the US Mint. 1.7 cents includes costs of the metal, manufacturing, and distribution. Your friend may have been thinking of just one step in that process.
It’s a joke as @renke lives in Germany and knows this. (The strikeout URL is the joke.)
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She should have paid with one of these
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The officer and school officials are being misrepresented in this post. Yes, they thought the $2 bill was fake (counterfeit), but nowhere does the original article imply they weren’t aware of the existence of the $2 denomination. The bill in question was from the 1953 series, which looks quite a bit different from the current two, and, because of its age, their counterfeit-detecting pen gave a false positive. They really thought it was a counterfeit example of a legitimate bill. And @frauenfelder’s line “…went to a bank with the bill, where he was told that $2 bills are legal tender.” is pure fiction.
That being said, there were probably better things for that officer to be doing than running all over town trying to find the counterfeiter. And they probably should have apologized, and maybe bought her lunch.
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“PROBABLY”??
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The alleged theft of $2 worth of chicken tenders led a campus officer – average salary $45,000 a year – to the convenience store that gave grandma the $2 bill.
Next stop – and these are just the facts – the cop went to a bank to examine the bill.
Finally, the mystery was solved: The $2 bill wasn’t a fake at all. It was real.
Oh dear. Looks like you failed reading comprehension. Back to the eighth grade for you.
I wonder if that’s a common problem? Should the adults have considered that possibility before treating the constitution like toilet paper?
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I think I see why you think this. You read @frauenfelder’s link, which was a commentary about the actual news story and it gave a link to the abc news story, but you didn’t read the actual news story. This is where you would’ve read that the police officer did indeed go to the bank, where they told him that circulated currency can be old.
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“…the cop went to a bank to examine the bill … The $2 bill wasn’t a fake at all. It was real.”
The bank told him that bill wasn’t a fake. They didn’t reveal to him the existence of two dollar bills for the first time.
Quote to me the part in the original news story that says the officer and school employees weren’t aware of the existence of $2 bills. They say “fake” to mean counterfeit, not an entirely made up denomination of bills.
Pray tell; why would anyone go to the trouble of counterfeiting such a low and uncommon denomination?
Especially a minor who was probably without access to any of the tools needed to even attempt such a forgery?
There’s a severe lack of critical thinking therein.
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Oh I don’t deny that they were dumb to think it was counterfeit. Someone could have Googled 1953 $2 bill and then there’d be no reason to detain and intimidate a 13-old-black girl…
Hmmm. Come to think of it, maybe there is a reason why they didn’t do that.
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I didn’t write that I knew what the officer was thinking. I simply wrote:
But let me add that if the officer knew that $2 bills are legal tender, surely he wouldn’t have needed to go to the bank. Surely he didn’t have to accuse the grandmother of passing counterfeit money. Apparently, he was confused by coming across dated currency. A simple phone call to a bank about the use of these marking pens, which I’ve never personally used on currency less than a $20, would have cleared up everything.
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“A school police officer in suburban Houston didn’t recognize as legal tender a $2 bill used by a 13-year-old who just wanted some chicken nuggets.” Dallas Morning News
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