At a gas station in Germany a man paid with a 300 Euro bill. This bill doesn't exist!! It was excepted by the employee, although the picture was that of two naked women in front of a Greek column...

That is so sad... Weren't all of the workers in Europe shown pictures of what the new currency would look like? When we got the new $20 bills, where I worked we all had a picture of what the new bills would look like at our registers.

I've been a bit late on this one. As here in France we're getting used to the larger bills as in the past the largest bill would have been a 50 Euro value bill, the new bills are seen with trepidation when a cashier sees them.
The cashier should have been suspicious though as most of the bills are very impersonal looking with unknown looking monuments.
I think most people assume that we are protected from counterfeiters by all the things they've stuck in them.
Even a 100 Euro bill here would be the kiss of death for the average cashier's good morning!
Like getting 50s back in the States.

In my long ago cashiering days, we shuddered when the Japanese tourists would give us their wallets full of big bills.

I feel bad for the cashier who took it, they probably assumed that it was one they hadn't anticipated yet!

More generally it strikes me as odd that the Euro notes go up to 500 Euros - now roughly equivalent to US$500. It has been reported here in Britain that law enforcement agencies throughout Europe are concerned that the existence of the 200 and 500 Euro notes will make money laudering easier. Given the widespread use of credit and debit cards (and personal cheques, too) I don't really see the point of very high denomination notes. Presumably it's a hangover from the days when high-value transactions were often perfomed in cash ...

A further oddity. Before the introduction of the Euro notes and coins every country in the Eurozone except the Netherlands issued coins and notes on the 1-2-5-10 principle, which is generally regarded as the most efficient for decimal currencies. (The USA and the Netherlands are/were unusual in preserving 25 as an integral part of the coinage - and the Dutch even had 25 and 250 Guilder notes). But 3, etc. ... - that's something that only makes sense if the basic unit is based on 12 (like the old English shilling) or based on 24, etc. In other words, a 300 Euro note just doesn't fit in with system at all. It's a pity the cashier apparently wasn't told this.

I'm still feeling for this cashier and my friends here all agreed upon hearing this story, that when you do work in a shop or something and you occasionally are faced with something unexpected such as, in my case, very large denomination travelers' checks, you hesitate. Also, in countries where people have less money, you have a tendency to think that only the richer Europeans could possibly throw about bills that size!
Therefore the poor cashier probably thought it was just something she hadn't seen yet.

I am having a difficult time with the coins. The Italians are much worse. You need glasses to see the blasted things.

I'll try to explain why the concept of a 300 Euro note is, at least intuitively, nonsense.

1.With a decimal currency the main unit, for example, the Euro, Guilder, Dollar or Pound, can be divided into 20's or 25's (as well as 50's, 10's, 5's, 2's and 1's. (Dividing into 30's would be bizarre).

2. The subdivisions are repeated (often with omissions) in the multiples of the main unit. So in the Netherlands, you had coins for 2.5 and 5 Guilders and notes for 10, 25, 50, 100, 250, 500 and 1000 Guilders. All that is/was highly consistent. If the subdivisions are 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 (as with the pound, for example) then one would expect the multiples of the pound to be 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, etc. (In fact, the £50 note is the highest issued).

3. In practice, few currencies are issued with a wholly consistent set of multiples. For example, the US abandoned first the $2.5 coins and more recently the $2 dollar note. Moreover, the $20 notes doesn't 'mirror' any 20c coin.

4. Where there are such inconsistencies, they (nowadays) are invariably a matter of *omission* (as in the American sytem) and not a matter of adding denominations ..

5. The reference to the pre-decimal pound was an arcane point -simply that 3's (and 30's, 300's) *would* only make sense in a currency based on 12, 24, etc.

Perhaps we should go a little further on the old UK currency, pre-decimal.

12 pennies (pence) to 1 shilling
20 shillings and 240 pence in 1 pound

Sue. Wasn't there a time when in the Channel Islands and Ireland, (and on the Isle of Man??) it was 13 pence= shilling.
I hope this doesn't 'throw' people ...

I don't know about Ireland but certainly Jersey had 13 to the shilling. Also the measurements were not the same, an inch in 'old Jersey' is less than the normal inch.