Paying cash for fast food is getting complicated. A Taco Bell customer says she was owed $9.39 in change after paying with cash, but the employee handed back only the bills and kept every coin.
The customer, identified as Holley, described the visit in a Facebook post, The Mary Sue reported. She did not say which Taco Bell location she visited.
What Happened When She Paid Cash
When Holley asked about the missing 39 cents, the cashier pointed to the end of the penny and told her Taco Bell no longer gives change, according to her post.
She tried to meet the worker halfway. Holley offered to take just 35 cents and give up the four pennies. The employee told her the restaurant was not handing out coins at all.
That answer did not make sense to her. In her post, she asked why a lack of pennies would stop a store from giving out nickels, dimes, or quarters, and she wondered how much money Taco Bell could keep if other locations did the same thing.
She said the amount was not the point. It was “the principle of the thing,” she wrote, and she said she would not go back.
How Commenters Reacted
Most of the people who replied doubted the cashier’s explanation. Commenter Kathy Mara suggested the employee may have misunderstood the instructions, noting that other businesses still hand back the nickel and dime portion of a customer’s change.
Theresa Banning Green said her local Circle K rounds 39 cents up to 40 cents. Others urged Holley to call the store’s management.
READ: Taco Bell Drive-Thru Customer Says His $8.04 Order Was Rounded Up to $9 Without Asking
Not everyone took her side. One commenter questioned whether the visit happened at all, and others thought the worker had simply gotten the policy wrong.
What Treasury Guidance Says About Rounding
The U.S. Mint stopped producing circulating pennies on Nov. 12, 2025. Existing pennies are still legal tender, but some stores have had trouble keeping enough on hand.
The Treasury Department has published guidance for businesses on how to handle that. It says retailers should keep giving penny change for cash purchases while the coin stays in circulation.
A Taco Bell restaurant in Hiawassee, Georgia. Credit: Harrison Keely / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
When penny change is not available, Treasury says businesses may round the final amount of a cash transaction to the nearest five cents. It recommends rounding only cash payments, doing it after all taxes and fees, and applying it in a fair, consistent, and transparent way.
Under that approach, Holley’s 39 cents would round to 40 cents, and she would have walked away with $9.40. Nothing in the guidance tells a business to hold back all of a customer’s coin change.
Treasury also notes that states will handle the issue in different ways. Without knowing where Holley’s Taco Bell is, it is not clear which state rules applied, or whether the cashier was following any store policy.
Not the First Complaint
Holley is not the first Taco Bell customer to complain about coins. In an earlier case cited by The Mary Sue, a woman said Taco Bell employees gave her $9.55 instead of the $9.74 she was owed because they had run out of certain coins.
There is no sign Taco Bell has told its restaurants to stop giving coin change.
Thirty-nine cents is not much money, but a Taco Bell customer paying cash should get it back, or at least get it rounded the way Treasury describes. Keeping every coin is not rounding, and if this happened as she says, it is a training problem Taco Bell should fix.
Has a restaurant ever kept your coin change since pennies stopped being made, and did you push back? Let us know!
