A hypothetical question (bank related)

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If I was to cash a cheque worth, say, $160, and told the teller "I want zero twenties", how would the teller react, and what would s/he do/give me in this case?

If I was to cash a cheque worth, say, $160, and told the teller "I want zero twenties", how would the teller react, and what would s/he do/give me in this case?

First of all is the cheque in CDN or US funds😁
Let’s say CDN funds
I am assuming the teller would have
Basic math skills and could figure it out
My teller always asks how would
You like it and 99.9% of the time accommodates
Not really sure why your asking this question though???

What reaction are you expecting?
“Oh my god I’m not sure if we have the funds
To cash this cheque”?
or
“Would you like that in nickels?”

The cheque would be CDN currency.

As for the idea of the question, this is due to my past experiences with banks in the last 25 to 30 years.  Everytime I requested to receive almost nothing but $100s and $50s, the teller told me s/he didn't have any.  I am not sure why s/he would say such thing, especially every visit I made - security reasons, maybe?  Because of this, I devided to settle on a lot of tens with a few fives in the mix, due to uncooperative tellers regarding $100s and $50s.

This was the CIBC I dealt with back then.  I ceased doing business with them in 2002 after they removed the cashing of future-dated cheques at a specific teller, but I had been dealing with Scotiabank for some months before, and they seem to have been accommodating with regards to what denominations I wsnt.

Now, ATMs are now being compatible to dispense multiple denominations, including fives.  The trouble is, Scotiabank's newer ATMs dispense all denominations excluding tens, and this would have shocked me if it had happened a decade ago, but wouldn't shock me now.  This implies that Scotiabank is slowly phasing out tens and in a few years Scotiabank branches will become ten-less.  If such ATMs come to my area, I will probably request $50s and $5s only, but if no $50s are available, I will then have no issues with all $20s, since to me, $20s are an ultimate last resort.

The human tellers I dealt with never bothered asking me how I wsnted it.  One teller I dealt with, cashed a $75 cheque, and didn't bother asking me how i wanted it, and outright gave me $20s, a ten and five.  I told the teller "you forgot to ask me if I wanted large bills with that".  The teller handled me in a cold tone, and (reluctantly) fulfilled my request.  That teller was never seen at the branch since.

I told the teller "you forgot to ask me if I wanted large bills with that".

No wonder she/he handled you in a cold tone!  How exactly do you hand out $75 in "large bills" (plural) anyway?  Maybe if they still had $25 notes that would work!

Do not forget that tellers are people too. There could be a great many reasons why they didn't ask you what denoms you wanted, the simplest being that they simply forgot and went into autopilot. I don't understand why some people get pleasure out of the idea that they got someone fired for not following the strict customer service script. Maybe they recently had a death in the family, a hard breakup, or a bad migraine. Remember, we're all humans and we can use our words. One would think that a simple "actually, could you give me a fifty?" as they were grabbing the twenties would have solved all the problems.

I've had nothing but good experiences with my bank. They have big bills most of the time and when they do not it is usually the end of the day after a lot of unlucky customer requests. If you were denied a lot, it is possible the branches you dealt with back in the day simply had bad head tellers who didn't care for options in their cash management.

As to your original question - if that was me you asked, I'd give you 50 50 50 10 or 100 50 10, but think it would be an odd way to phrase a request. If I regularly wanted 50s/100s and got denied a few times in a row, I'd probably ask to speak to a manager and ask if they could pull some strings to give me that option in the future.

Again, asking politely solves many problems. I've cultivated positive relationships with many tellers and I get what I want 95% of the time because I always say thank you and I'm understanding when the 5% comes along, because I know they'd do it if they could. I know that if a regular customer snipped at me that way because one step of the routine slipped my mind, I can't say I'd be particularly motivated to give them 110% in the future.

I am wondering something now, could it be possible that banks may have a policy that there may be a minimum number of certain denominations they can give out to a customer?  I remember asking a question like that to a CIBC teller regarding $100 bills, and she responded "five".  I had no clue what she was referring to, but now I realize this might imply that the minimum number of $100 bills they can give to customers may be five, and that may explain why bank tellers have been telling me they did not have any $100 bills in their tills.

Either that, or the $100s and $50s were not available until peak traffic time.

If there are minimum numbers for many denominations tellers can distribute, it likely doesn't apply to the basic denominations ($5 bill and all coin denominations $1 or less).

I have never heard of such things. I ask for high and low quantities of bills all the time depending on my needs of the particular day and never been told there is a minimum.

I am thinking the tellers refused to give me any $100 and $50 bills because of my obsession with those particular denominations back in the day, plus the tellers may have felt I truly didn't need them and the banks only give out denominations that customers need, not want.

I hated $20 bills for a long time, and maybe it was due to my obsession over larger denominations back in the day.  I would later give up on $100 and $50 bills knowing the outcome, and I would request a lot of $10 bills instead, which the tellers had no problem with.

At least I didn't care for the $1,000 bill when it was circulating, and maybe it was because it was very elusive and virtually impossible to find in my province.