Ever been told that at, say, a restaurant by an acquaintance?

It’s an old-fashioned way of saying, “I am paying for this” or “we are paying for this.”

Get it? Your money is no good here. Like, it’s counterfeit. (Even though it appears to say “This bill is legal tender for all debts, public and private.”)

It’s no good, and the only money being accepted by the merchants is that of Mr. Deep Pockets who is paying for you.

Well, in the United Arab Emirates … sometimes it does seem as if your money is no good. Even when you want it to be.

This is a country where the bills in circulation don’t match the bills most merchants want to see.

If you go to a bank machine in the States, you are going to get 20-dollar bills. A very handy denomination. Same in Europe. You get 20-euro bills. Maybe you would get a disgusted expression if you bought M&Ms with a $20, but you could.

In Abu Dhabi, however, when you take out, say, 1,000 dirhams (about $270) … you are likely to get it in … two 500-dirham bills. At best, you might get it in five 200-dirham bills.

And this is a problem.

Because almost no one wants to break a Dh200 bill. And certainly not a Dh500.

The 200 note is like carrying around a 54-dollar bill. Which you would have trouble breaking even in the States.

But here? No one except perhaps a major grocery or significant retail outlet wants a $54 bill. Your laundry doesn’t want it. Your cabbie doesn’t want it. The guy at the falafel store, where a sandwich costs Dh3 … certainly doesn’t want it.

And when the bank machine gives you a Dh500 note … well, you may as well not have any money at all. If you’re about to interact with the smaller merchants. No one has change for a Dh500 note (a $135 bill).  None of the “little” people. If you were to offer them a Dh500 note … they would be offended or angry or both.

So that is when your UAE legal tender really “is no good here.”

The most useful bill is the Dh10 note — the $2.72 bill. Walking out the door, you would like to have five or six of those in your pocket, because they are to the local economy what the quarter was in the U.S. 40 years ago … and what the $20 is now.

Oh, and a sidelight here:

1. Almost no banks in Abu Dhabi have tellers who handle cash. They send you over to the machine to use your card. Really. HSBC, a huge chain … has several outlets in town, but only one where you can get cash. True story. It’s on Airport Road. When we paid our sleazy realtor his Dh5,000 commission … we had to go to that one bank to get the money.

2. If you try to outwit the cash machine by getting some odd denomination (and did I mention it disburses it in bills no smaller than Dh100?) … say, Dh1,300 … instead of getting two 500 notes and three 100 notes … you are likely to get one 500 and four 200s.

It’s almost fiendish.

So, nobody has change for anything bigger than a Dh100 note, and even then they’re going to glare at you, as often as not. But you can’t go to a bank and get a nice spread of small bills. The bank machine gives you nothing smaller than 100s, and will always give you bigger bills if it can. Problems!

Yes. You have money. But sometimes that money really is no good here.