take a penny leave an attitude

I'm having a bad day. One of those days when a culmination of small things make you feel like you suck at life and everyone is laughing at you. My final straw today was...well first let me explain something. We sell 99¢ chips at the store. With the tax it totals out to $1.01. Well most people get pissy cause they have to dig around for a penny. And some just don't even look and stare at me blankly when I say it $1.01, not $1.00 then they say "I don't have change" and I say well then you'd better give me that other dollar you're holding huh? and they do and they think I'm a bitch. I say if you expect to not pay the full amount for an item then you're an idiot and you shouldn't be coming in to buy anything in the first place. I'm not cheap, nor am I on some power trip. I don't care about the stupid penny. I've let hundreds of kids get by without it but they genuinely looked and didn't have it and that's ok. when these assholes come in and expect that it's ok to not pay the full amount simply cause they don't want to break their dollar bills or run back to their office for more change again cause the price has been and will always be $1.01 and they just expect me to be like ok just leave, it doesn't matter that you do this weekly and still haven't learning and don't feel like you need to take responsibility for yourself and throw your 'you're so mean and cheap' attitude at me. My company expects me to balance a till every day. If I let all the pennies walk out the door as dollar bill then I'd never balance. It's the principal of the matter and I take that seriously. So today 2 staff members come in and we go thru the schpeel and I say "do you have the penny, it's $1.01" and he looks at me blankly and says "no, I gave you guys like 20¢ extra a few weeks ago!" and I say "not to me you didn't and besides how do I know you're not lying?" and he says "I'm not" and I say "fine, but next time I want you to be prepared with the penny." He's been in before. He knows better. So they leave and I go back to my office. 2 minutes later the woman he was with (I don't know who she is or what her name is. I never got a look at her face when she came in the first time) storms back in the store and slams the penny down on the counter, knockin over a gum display in the process. "Here! I want that woman who was here earlier to have her penny!! I've worked here 10 years and I've never been called a liar!!" I heard all this happen and so I shouted out "wait" and I headed towards the front. She takes off. So I follow her out and call for her to stop. She speeds up and never looks back. A passing student tried to get her attention for me and she ignored her too. I wasn't about to chase her down. I was going to tell her how ridiculous she was being and that she took the whole thing and escalated it entirely way much. But she refused to talk to me or look at me. So she made me feel like shit and I in turn have the pleasure of knowing that I made her feel like shit first. But that wasn't my intention. I was joking about the lying comment but she didn't think I was funny, aparently. I considered finding the guy and apologizing to him for not being more guarded in my joke but not to her, she doesn't deserve an apology if she won't even talk to me when I try to defend myself, she just bolted out of there like a child. This is now the 3rd time my mouth has gotten me in trouble, 2nd time this week even. I can't say anything about the first 2 incidents cause people get too butt hurt and threaten to sue while others turn things around to where I'm the bad one even though I was just the messenger. Today's incident has happend before. German man (as I call him. he's got an accent) threw a big hissy fit at me about 2 months ago when I said I needed the penny. He said "oh yeah, wouldn't want the store to go bankrupt!" Now when he comes in he looks to see if I'm there and when he can't avoid me he throws his money at me, literally. So I'm feeling pretty low about myself today. I am an honest and genuine person. I say things and I don't always think first but that's only when I'm not bottling things up and trying not to offend people. I say what's on my mind, usually it's something sarcastic but it's always the truth. So either way I can't win. I know you're probably thinking that we should just have one of those cups with spare change in them but the company is very clear on that being prohibited so I'm the enforcer of the change. Yay me. Thank goodness tomorrow is a holiday and I have the day off.