Quarters Only?

So has anyone else run into this?

It's the middle of the night, you've got a tire with a slow leak and you don't have time to stop & put the spare on. So you pull into a filling station, spot the coin operated air hose, pull up nearby and reach into your pocket for 75 cents. Then, as you start sorting through the change in your pocket you notice the "Out of Order" sign.

On to the next filling station where you repeat the procedure. And the next. And the next after that. Finally you locate a filling station with a working air hose. Once again you start sorting through the change in your pocket. You find 75 cents, but it includes two dimes & a nickel. The machine only takes quarters.

Stepping inside to ask the cashier to swap you a quarter for your dimes & nickel sometimes works, but most times not. He's only allowed to open his cash drawer when ringing up a sale. So, you either purchase something or you wait for another customer to come along and purchase something. Or you go out & change the damn tire you didn't have time to change to begin with.

I was speaking with a filling station attendant about the frequency of the air hose being down at her place of business. You know what she told me? She told me that 9 out of 10 times the air hose is down because somebody tried feeding dimes & nickels to it. The "odd" sizes jam up the works, and requires a service tech to come out, open up the machine, pry the nickels & dimes loose, close it up and put it back into service. Then it works just like a champion until the next time somebody tries to feed it something other than quarters.

So the question before the board is, what possessed the vending world to start discriminating against the lesser valued coins? Once upon a time you could feed a coin operated anything any denomination coin you had handy - well not pennies - and as soon as you'd deposited the proper dollar amount for the item/service you wanted, the machine would spit it out. No longer...

Am I the only one who thinks the current preference for quarters only is both elitist & short sighted? I've got a pocket full of coins right now, but without looking I know the majority of the coins in my pocket are dimes & nickels. If I don't have the proper number of quarters, that vending machine just lost a sale. And if some stubborn sould decides to feed it dimes & nickels instead, then it loses a lot of sales until it's put back to rights.

Perhaps going back to the old-style coin mechanisms might not be a bad idea. More sales from folks who don't carry quarters only. Fewer jams from odd sized coins, so less down time which also translates to more sales. Am I wrong?

Oh, and I'm not just picking on the coin operated air hose at your corner filliing station. No, no. I'd like to see this change instituted across the entire plenum of coin operated machines. Parking meters, gumball machines, washers, dryers, pay phones (if you can find one, that is) cold drink machines, vibrating motel beds, food machines, etc.

Any coin operated machine that only accepts a single denomination coin just cannot be a good idea any way you look at it. I'm old enough to remember when you could get a shot of air for free from the local filling station, and while I don't like paying for air, I've grown accustomed to the demand.

So I guess my question is, what genius decided that only quarters were usable coins when it comes to vending machine purchases? Can someone answer me that?

Okay, rant's over now...