James Cash Penney hated Roosevelt (dimes)

[snopes]

Comment: My mom recently told me that the founder of JC Penney was very
much opposed to Franklin Roosevelt, and as a result, he would refuse to
carry dimes in the cash registers at his stores since they are imprinted
with Roosevelt's picture. To this day, the only dimes in the cash
registers at JC Penney are from circulation from the customers, and they
never order dimes from the bank.

[Brad from Georgia]

Well, let's see: Penney retired as CEO the same year the Roosevelt dime came out. So it seems very likely that this story is true.

Robert E. Lee died in 1870, after learning that in just 39 years the Lincoln penny would be minted.

John Adams was so incensed about the prospects of Thomas Jefferson's appearing on the quarter that he refused to be on any coin at all until he recently got his own TV series, and now he's on some dollars.

Coins are the common way that people who hate specific Presidents demonstrate their feelings. Penney is no exception. In fact, he considered changing the name of the stores from "J.C. Penneys" to "J.C. Ihaterooseveltdon'tspenddimes."

[snopes]

Comment: Does the JCPenney Company, to this day, refuse to use dimes
because of James Cash Penney's disdain for Franklin D Roosevelt?

This rumor is not new to me but I've never found anything on it. I was
with the company for 20 years in a Management position. I had heard this
rumor early in my career and noticed that we did not use dimes. When we
did change orders there were no places in our forms for dimes. We didn't
order them. We would accept them from customers but would never issue them
rolled or otherwise from the cash rooms. They were not ordering dimes when
I left the company in 2002. I don't know if anything has changed. I don't
know how it could be confirmed but, if true would be interesting for your
"Money" section. I worked in many different stores in many states. We just
didn't use dimes.
When I asked my counterparts why we didn't use dimes, they could never
give a reason because they didn't know either. One Store Manager said he
thought it was because dimes are inefficient????? I think the Roosevelt
explanation is more likely.

[snopes]

Most casinos in Las Vegas neither accept nor distribute dimes either, and I doubt they were all founded by people who hated FDR.

I suspect it might be for the same reason that many businesses don't like half-dollars or $2 bills: They're inefficient. Dimes, half-dollars, and $2 bills all take the place of only two other pieces of money -- a dime can be replaced with two nickels, a half-dollar with two quarters, and a $2 bill with two singles. But if you didn't have nickels, for instance, you'd have to use five pennies instead, and if you didn't have quarters, you'd need at least three other coins to take their place.

Of course, long ago eschewing the use of dimes might have been a ploy to give customers smaller denominations of coins in change with the hopes that they'd be more likely to spend them.

[ParaDiddle]

Originally Posted by Brad from Georgia

Well, let's see: Penney retired as CEO the same year the Roosevelt dime came out. So it seems very likely that this story is true.

Robert E. Lee died in 1870, after learning that in just 39 years the Lincoln penny would be minted.

John Adams was so incensed about the prospects of Thomas Jefferson's appearing on the quarter that he refused to be on any coin at all until he recently got his own TV series, and now he's on some dollars.

Coins are the common way that people who hate specific Presidents demonstrate their feelings. Penney is no exception. In fact, he considered changing the name of the stores from "J.C. Penneys" to "J.C. Ihaterooseveltdon'tspenddimes."

I envy that giant throbbing sarcas-mo-tron you keep poking us with.

- P

[Native Medley]

I worked for JCPenney just long enough to know that no, they don't distribute dimes or $10 bills in cash orders. Supposedly, it's because ol' JCP didn't like the number 10. Roosevelt was never mentioned.

I thought it was pretty annoying, actually, because that meant the nickels went twice as fast, and so did the $5 bills. So at 8:30 when someone was due $19.46 in change and you'd had no downtime for change requests between customers for 2-3 hours, they got a lot of $1 bills, mostly nickels (quarters don't last very long in a drawer, ever) and a few too many pennies to please them, and they got very angry.

[snopes]

Comment: I recently made a purchase at JC Penney and when the clerk
returned my change there were 4 nickels. She said " I apologize for all
the nickels but Mr Penney hated Roosevelt and does not allow dimes in his
store." Is there any truth to this.

[snopes]

Mr Penney hated Roosevelt and does not allow dimes in his store.

James Cash Penney died almost forty years ago; I don't think he's in much of a position to allow or disallow anything any more.

[snopes]

Comment: I have heard that JCPenney stores don't use dimes because Mr.
Penney hated F.D. Roosevelt. Is this true? Also heard it's because his
daughter choked on a dime. True?

[jcpeon]

I have worked for JCPenney for nearly 30 years. It is true that no JCPenney store uses dimes other than to recycle the dimes received from customers. When James Cash Penney opened his first store (originally known as "The Golden Rule") he did not want to be known as a five and dime store so none of his stores have ever used dimes. This is fairly common knowledge among most JCPenney "old timers"...used to be taught to new hires back in the old days as part of JCPenney trivia. As far as $10 bills - that is generally a store manager discretion. Some store managers like using tens and some prefer to just use fives...

[snopes]

Originally Posted by jcpeon

When James Cash Penney opened his first store (originally known as "The Golden Rule") he did not want to be known as a five and dime store so none of his stores have ever used dimes.

The phrase "five and dime" referred to the cost of the merchandise in the store -- not stocking dimes in cash registers would have had no effect on whether the store really was a "five and dime" type of retailer, or whether its customers perceived it as such (especially since not stocking dimes creates an additional need to distribute nickels, which are still an element of "five and dime"). And customers are still going to spend dimes at the store, so they're going to end up in the cash registers anyway.

This is just as silly as claiming that WalMart outlets don't use $1 bills because they don't want to be known as "dollar stores."

[jcpeon]

Perhaps you should do some serious research on the subject. It has also been noted on biographies about Mr. Penney.

[snopes]

Originally Posted by jcpeon

It has also been noted on biographies about Mr. Penney.

Then you should have no trouble citing them here. We'll wait ...

[crocoduck_hunter]

Snopes, don't you have a few articles about factoids about famous people that have been cited in biographies of those people that later turned out to be false?

[Wintermute]

If you google you will come up with a bunch of stories making the same claim. That while working at penny's they were told they didn't use dimes for this reason.

It doesn't make sense to me