For some reason, it really bugs me the way airlines want to charge me for beers and headphones, but ‘exact change is appreciated.’ Of course, as The Lady Janet pointed out to me when I brought it up last week on the plane, I could solve this problem very easily. Since I know I’m going to drink a beer, I just need to carry some small bills.

So sometimes I go buy something like a cup of coffee just to break a $20, but sometimes I forget, and it just seems kind of silly and arbitrary to me that they charge $5 for a can of MGD that cost about 20&#162 more retail than the soda pop they’re serving for free, when my family paid like $800 bucks to sit there, and then they add insult to injury by asking, ‘Don’t you have anything smaller?’ when I obviously don’t, like it’s somehow my fault that ATMs spit out yuppy bucks in $20 increments.

I’ve had the same gripe with my doctor’s office. If everyone who walks in has a $10 or a $15 copay, you ought to start the day with a big stack of fives, and on the flight where Delta charged $2 for a pair of headphones and $4 for a beer, they must know they’re playing Crazy Eights. How hard could it possibly be to figure out what cash drawer you need for a typical flight instead of getting on the blowhorn and asking if any passengers have change for a twenty? I mean, come on, I wouldn’t sell lemonade from a stand on the sidewalk without a few dollars in the till.

Of course, there’s another elegant solution that comes to mind. I could just hold out the $20 bill and say, ‘I’ll have 5 beers please.’