Does a Little Cheating Matter? (1 cent)

I go into Pumpernickels for a cup of coffee and a bagel. There is a line of about ten people. In front of me is a man, there with his young son. An older man (father? father-in-law?) comes up to him holding two large cups of coffee in his hand, which he has self-poured from the store's coffee urns. He asks the younger man if he can hold them (a clear impossibility, since he has a child in one hand and his own coffee in the other). The younger man says 'no', that the older man should find a table and sit down. The older man is concerned that there is something wrong with sitting down with his two large cups of coffee before paying. The younger man tells him not to worry, that he will pay for the coffee, and that the proprietors know that the older man is not going to cheat them. The older man agrees, apparently finds a table, and comes back a minute or so later with money which he gives the younger man to pay for his two large cups of coffee.

The younger man gets to the register. He tells the cashier what he is buying, adding that he is also going to pay for two cups of coffee that have already been taken to a table. The cashier says: 'large or small?'

The younger man says 'small'.