This morning after getting the stitches removed from my gums, I went to Scott's grocery store to get some donuts and other culinary supplies. I gave the checkout girl a $20 bill, and then watched her pick up a black Sharpie and put a little tick-mark just to the right of Andrew Jackson's head.
"Why did you make that mark?" I asked her.
She said, "Some of the other Scott's stores were having trouble with their twenties, so we're all doing this."
"Oh," I said. As if that answered my question, which it most certainly didn't. But being unduly polite and not wanting to embarrass her, I didn't question further. I just accepted her answer like a lemming, collected my change, and left to enjoy creamy vanilla filling.
But ever since, I've been wondering, "So what kind of a problem can a store have with a $20 bill? And why does defacing the bill with a black mark solve that problem? And why was I too timid to ask this question of vital concern to our national currency?"
Career-wise, I've been hanging around and writing about and cheering on churches and pastors for the past 25 years as my denomination's Communications Director.
Steve, usually it's a kind of yellow marker that is used to check if a bill is counterfeit. Don't ask me how it all works -- my retail days are behind me -- but if it's a fake it affects the mark.
I never used one. If I got a fake, I just passed it to the next guy in change... ;)