I saw a video on Tik Tok where an enterprising young fellow demonstrated how he was able to get free candy bars at Walmart.

In the US, virtually every retailer has a sign indicating that the exact change or use of a card is appreciated due to a national coin shortage. This shortage is a result of the mint closing down due to the pandemic as well as various stores being closed and an overall increase in electronic transactions. Who knew that in-person, cash transactions are what keep hard currency in circulation.

Back to the enterprising young fellow. He walked up to the self check-out lane and selected a candy bar. The price was $0.88 and with tax, the total was $0.94. He inserted a dollar bill into the bill slot. Normally, one would expect to receive $0.06 in change, but due to the coin shortage, the machine was programmed to round up. The end result is that the machine returned his dollar bill.

I told a friend of mine about this. He said he was just at Walmart, and all the machines are programmed not to accept or give cash. Looks like Walmart already patched the loophole. No loss for me as I shouldn’t be eating candy bars anyway.