Coin rant

Renting has a few challenges that people who own houses generally do not have like where you are going to do your laundry.  I don't have a laundry facility in my apartment, but the people below me do, only part of the reason why I am a little peaked about my first land lord.  When I moved in I was charged a rate that was okay for a two bedroom apartment, but the people below me in the house have three bedrooms, laundry access to the basement and 50% more living space and were charged only a little more for rent.  The house was sold and the new land lord has raised their rent each year and mine has stayed the same.  So I know ere was reason to complain.  I did not find out that the rents were that similare until long after I moved in.

Laundry.  So I go to a Laundrymat to wash clothes, and I am okay with that because I have been going to a laundry mat for decades, except eleve years when there was laundry in the building I was in, but even then it was not included in the rent.  I am about to complain about the government in a few  seconds.  So laundry mats come in two varieties, ones where you purchase tokens to run the machine and ones where you use coins.  He token ones are easier to use in some ways; see rant.  Tokens do mean that you may have to buy too many tokens and you can't use them anywhere eles, but machines are easier to use.  Coin operated machines are fine until your government starts messing around with the coin weight.

Every year they have been changing one thing or another.  They change the bills so that the people don't get bored with the same bills year in year out.  The change one bill at a time, so that you can see the new bill and realize that the government is working for you, so that you money is not as boring as say American Money.  But every time they change a note the coin machines need to be recalibrated to accept the new bill. So this is an expense for coin machine operators, seamingly every year.  But they are not as big a hassle as coin changes.  

Coin operated machines have to be able to tell the difference between a metal slug and an actual coin.  They have to be able to determine the difference bettween a count that is looks nearly identical to another coin.  The Big Smoke Transit System had a token for their system years ago that worked fine for decades until Mexico began minting a coin made of the same material, of the same size and shape, so it wieght the same too.  The Token cost two dollars and the Mexican coin was valued at about a cent.  Problem for the transit system.  So that is a few of the problems.  

My government has now started messing around with the weights of the coins, telling tax payers that they are saving a few million dollars every time they punch out a trillion coins.  Then the coin machine operators have to then update all their machines to accept the new coin weight.  Then the next year they change the coin again and the the systems have to be alter again.  I just did laundry and I had five dollars worth of coins rejected from the machine, all of them were last year's coins.  The dovernment has been releasing new coins with colours on them and these special coins also get regularly rejected. 

I like new interesting coins, there is a bit of pride in having good looking money, it must be horrible for people with the same boring green money, but would you please make up your mind and stop changing the mass of e money.  I mean really that was half my coins that got rejected.