vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #166 / Social life / Reading article...

The other day our account-ant, Nelly Fyo-dorovna, stuck her head in the door and asked for help. The car had returned from the bank, and she needed some men to carry the bankroll upstairs.

We sprang to help. Payday, which once came at the start of the month, has drifted later and later, and most of us were eager to stuff our pockets with packets of tattered old 500 ruble notes, crisp new Peter the Greats, or whatever they gave us this time.

Only when we got to the car did it become obvious why our help was needed. The entire payroll was going to be distributed in 5-ruble coins. Nelly Fyodorovna did not appreciate our guffaws. She was going to have to count it out.

Readers will be astounded to learn that the problem originated in Moscow. The Central Bank, our accountant said, had ordered savings institutions to get rid of its run of 5-ruble coins. And so Inkombank provided our company’s payroll in a form about as convenient as a shipload of pieces of eight.

The problems were immediately obvious as employees lined up at the cashier’s window. One by one, Nelly Fyodorovna counted coins into her skirt. When she reached 40, she scooped them up and dumped them in your hands. You dropped the coins into whatever receptacle you had handy. I brought a box that houses our two-volume desktop Time World Atlas and Dictionary/Thesaurus, but it was quickly apparent that it wasn’t big enough. I dashed to a market next door and bought a sturdy plastic shopping bag decorated with a picture of a sunset and some words to live by: “Phewa Tall.” When we were done, I skulked away like Judas, clutching my bag of silver.

Now that we have the coins, I’m doing my best to get rid of them. Whenever I buy something, I try to change coins into bills. I start big, asking for 100 rubles’ worth, and work my way down.

“Can I please exchange these for banknotes?”

“No. I have too many of those already.”

“How about 50?”

“No.”

“What about 10 rubles? Please?”

“Oh, all right.”

The cashier slides over a grubby 10, and I experience a minor triumph. I am evolving, step by step, to a higher economic level.

I know: It would be easier to haul my coins back to Inkombank. But that won’t work. Banks refuse to change them.