The seven stages of asking a shopkeeper for change

1. You hand over a thousand-rupee note for a forty-rupee item.
2. The shopkeeper looks at the note. Then at you. Then back at the note.
3. “Sano chaina?” Nothing smaller?
4. You conduct a full and public search of a wallet whose contents you already know.
5. He opens a drawer whose contents he also already knows. Hope is not a rational process.
6. Someone is dispatched to the shop next door.
7. Your change arrives as coins, four ten-rupee notes, and one note so soft it has the texture of cloth.

Total elapsed time: four minutes. Value of item: forty rupees.