There's a money room in the basement of 1 South Van Ness, where the Municipal Transportation Agency, which operates Muni, is headquartered. Workers literally count by hand bags of cash and coins taken in as fares from passengers throughout the day.
After we finished bashing our heads against the windows and swearing, we read on:
When Muni recently needed to pull some of those unionized bean counters away from the money room to staff kiosks around the city where transit passes are sold, its managers hoped to replace them with workers from a private contracting outfit.
Surely someone, somewhere has come up with a better way to count large amounts of change and small bills, haven't they? Nah. If someone had invented something that space-age and wonderful, Muni would have purchased it long ago, freeing up those employees to man those empty kiosks and obviating the need for contractors! Everybody would win! Sadly, that technology is only the stuff of dreams.