Sorry gg! Here goes...
My brother, a friend of ours and I spent one summer at an American summer camp. My brother headed home afterwards but our friend and I wanted to go travelling, so we took a "driveaway" from Boston to San Fransisco. (A driveaway is when you take a car from one place to another on behalf of a person moving house or the like - similar to renting but there's not usually a charge, as you're doing the person a favour (albeit an "official" favour))
At the driveaway office, on collecting the Toyota 4x4, I had to pay a $300 deposit, refundable at the other end of the trip. We were very lucky securing the car from Boston to SF, because it was the exact journey we wanted to do, and normally you just have to take more or less what's on offer.
In the BUNAC (summer camp) handbook, it advises not to take the returned deposit by cheque, as it's difficult for non-Americans to cash cheques in the US. Anyway, at the return office in SF, I had no choice but to take a cheque and the office person assured me that thier bank on the next block would cash it no problem.
With an empty wallet I went to the bank and asked for the cheque to be paid $200 in travellers' cheques and $100 hard cash, which they kindly did.
So, with 5 x $20 in my wallet I went across to McD and got about $3 or $4 of stuff for lunch. I got my filet-o-fish or whatever it was and handed over one of my $20's. The woman gave me $15 in paper change and I turned to collect my food. She shouted me back to give me the rest of the change (which I obviously expected to be a dollar and some change) but she gave me coins and $80. I said that I had given her a $20 and that she had given me too much change, but she was sure I had given her a $100 bill. I knew I hadn't had a spare $100 bill, so insisted that I had only handed over a $20 but she was as adamant as I was!
I went to my seat and felt a bit uneasy about it so checked my receipt and right enough - I had given $20 and my change should have been about $16 but it was in fact $96 or so. With receipt in hand I went back to the counter to show it to the lady, but she opened the till drawer, held up a $100 bill and said, somewhat irately "This is yours, finish! Finish!" (It was a Spanish-speaking area to the South of SF).
I went back to the table and couldn't eat my stuff. I've kept the receipt in my travel journal. I hope she didn't get into trouble at cashing-up time at the end of that day.
(Hopefully that's the story you meant! Apologies if not...)
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