The banking system of Canada is very strange. I tried closing an old account today, and the teller told me I had to remember which two pieces of ID I had used when opening the account. Back in 1999.
When I made it clear that this feat was inaccessible to me, the teller asked me if I wanted to be given my remaining balance in $15 bills. I haven’t been in Canada for a while, and for all I know $15 bills might have been introduced. But that was a weird moment.
“$15 bills”
I’m assuming she meant $50 bills since 15 and 50 are very often confused in speech (as are 16 and 60).
Americans (and I presume Canadians tough maybe not Quebeckers) keep 17 and 70, 18 and 80 and 19 and 90 more separate in speech by turning the -ty at the end into -dy so that 70, 80 and 90 are pronounced sevendy, eighdy and ninedy (in my dialect at least).
Also, do they really use $50 bills in Canada? When I worked at a store many years ago store policy was to not accept anything larger than $20 bills.
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There was a reason for that:
Wesley Weber (full name is Wesley Wayne Weber, 1965) was a Canadian who succeeded in counterfeiting the Canadian hundred-dollar bill. Because of this, many stores stopped accepting $100 bills until the note was redesigned. According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, they are the highest quality computer produced counterfeits of Canadian currency to date. This was one reason that the 100 dollar bills were redesigned to make them more difficult to counterfeit. The Weber bill is still taught in police colleges as the prime test case for counterfeit.
Wesley Weber was a self-taught mastermind who had spent years tinkering with banknotes to perfect the simulated images and security features. These skills earned him a conviction for cheque forgery ring in 1997, and another for counterfeiting $10 and $20 bills since 1999. He was arrested in October 2000 for passing a counterfeit $100 at an auto parts supplier, but was released on bail a week later. He pleaded guilty in August 2001,[1] and received a five-year prison sentence.[2] Weber was released from jail in August 2006.
During jail term Weber learned market trading[3] and after release founded consulting firm “Goldbridge Financial Inc.”[4] that provided financial services without registration.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Weber
I was wondering, “What does she have against the National Broadcasting Company? ” with the header.
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“There was a reason for that:”
Except my case in the US where as I remember, using anything larger than a 20 was always troublesome. This makes no sense to Polish people since here (and in many other countries) $100 bills were commonly used (as unofficial savings).
Polish people don’t believe me when I tell them that actually using one for anything but a bank deposit in the states is liable to not be easy (unless things have changed).
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There are 50$ bills in Canadian banks (not in ATMs, where there are only 20$) and 15$ bills had never existed.
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—using one for anything but a bank deposit in the states is liable to not be easy (unless things have changed
They have… At least in NYC and vicinity no-one raises an eyebrow when accepting a hundred.
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“since 15 and 50 are very often confused in speech (as are 16 and 60).”
Really? Not in any American dialect that I’ve heard.
But turning “T”s into “D”s is common for many words in the Southeast, not just where numbers are concerned:
water = “wadder”
winter = “winner”
etc.
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There aren’t any $15 bills. I think it was meant as a sarcastic refusal to close/access your account. 
That’s really frustrating. I hope you eventually found a way to close your account?
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