Coin Operated Machines

Are an abomination. It is laundry day, and since I never really have quarters on me (the vending machine at work serves up all manners of fabulous goodies for a quarter), I carefully got money out of one of the few ATMs in town which spit out 10s, rather than 20s. Actually this one's even more intelligent, it gives you a couple of 10s and a lot of 20s, which is cool, and infinitely more usable for somethings than the ones around Brown (the one inside Faunce Arch not only spits out 10s, but does not require that the amount of money you withdraw be a multiple of 20). Then earlier today I walked across to one of the publicly available coin operated laundromats to get quarters, and discovered my $10 could not be consumed by the machine, then it failed on one of my 20s. I have 80 quarters sitting next to me, because I only had one old 20 dollar bill and four dollars in ones. The new bills have been in circulation since at least 2004 (my 10 bucks are from Series 2004 A, so I know), and yet they cannot easily be changed into quarters. Starbucks really doesn't want to give out quarters, why oh why can't they find a simpler way to earn money from laundry machines. Where is the promised world where I could pay for everything using a mobile phone, or a credit card.

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