Magnets Anyone?

In my college days, I used to work as a cashier for a big department store in this city. Believe me, it's an agonizing job. You have to be good at scrutinizing the bills given you. If you happened to receive fake bill(s) but failed to recognize them as fake, that goes against your salary. You also have to be good at giving the right amount of change. There are times when you would run out of loose coins and you would end up asking the customer for loose change or be forced to do mental arithmetic so you will not end up being short or over of cash.

Come to think of it, I think that any job no matter how lowly but requires you to be handling cash is quite agonizing. The agony that I had back then was with fake bills. Then I hear from the news that fake coins are proliferating. Even the Banko Sentral says that they look just like the real ones it becomes impossible to tell by just looking. The only way to tell whether the coins you have are real is by using magnets. If a coin sticks to the magnet then it is fake.

Should I now buy a magnet and pass every coin I receive from anyone over it? A magnet is way better that bringing a conspicuous UV light with you - for fake bills. Come to think of it, I could sell magnets to every store owner, every barbecue vendor, every internet cafe proprietor, every tricycle driver in the neighborhood where I live. Then branch out to the neighboring barangays then to the neighboring cities. Hehehe, who knows perhaps these magnets could make a millionaire, billionaire, zillionaire out of me.

So what if the coins or bills that I have are fake? I am not the one responsible for faking those things, I just happen to be holding one. I know that establishments would collect the fake money and turn them over to Banko Sentral or keep it as a specimen but how about my money?

Can you imagine every person you know bringing magnets? Well, I hear they're good for the health, heheheh...