Wednesday, January 13, 2021

I Have Cash

 
This is all true.

My Uncle Bill was unusual in a number of ways. The ways that pertain to this story are: he was quite poor. His meager savings went chiefly to alcohol. And he was old.

So when he showed up in Montana to attend my father's funeral, there were a number of things about being in a small middle-class home he wasn't accustomed to. And when he asked my mom if he could make a long-distance call from her phone, she smiled him into the kitchen,  introduced him to the wall phone with the curly cord, and returned to the living room with the rest of us. None of us could make sense of the ensuing clinky noises coming from the kitchen and when we went in to investigate, there was Uncle Bill with a big pile of quarters trying to find someplace in the phone to stick them, and dropping them on the floor.

It's just an extreme version of that old common experience of waiting in a long grocery line behind an old woman who springs into action only after the clerk rings up the total, and then she begins to root through her purse for her checkbook, while eyes roll all the way back in the line. Old people!

And now that I are one, it's all just as embarrassing as my younger self might have guessed.

All righty then! Hand the clerk your credit card to run through the machine zzzip-clank. No? I run it myself? On that little box? How? Oh. The little slot along the side? I just slide it through there? Okay. Which way?

The side with the magnetic stripe goes this direction. No, the other direction. See, there's a picture of it right there. Right there. There. Here, let me help you.
 
I begin to squint at the machine every time to make out the picture of the card with the stripe so I'll be ready but for some reason it's never as clear as you'd think. And then the slot disappears altogether. I hover at the side of the little machine and frown.
 
No, here, you just stick the card in the bottom and it will read the smart chip. At the bottom. No, the other way. Just shove it in. A little farther. Here, let me help you.
 
Then I get accustomed to that but there's always a holdup. You have to push enter. The green button. Okay. Then sign. Sign? With what? You can use your finger. That doesn't look anything like my signature though! That's okay. It is? Okay. Thank you.
 
Then I get accustomed to that and I try to get in and out expeditiously but the machine isn't responding. You have to put in your phone number. I do? Okay. And then hit enter. The green button. Oh! Ha ha! Of course. Whoops! Okay thank you, see you next week! Ma'am? Ma'am? Don't forget your card. Whoops! Thanks! And also, it wants to know how you want your receipt. How do I want my receipt? Yes, paper or email? Or no receipt? Oh. No receipt, I guess. Bye!
 
As I make my exit the clerk laboriously twists around the machine and hits an appropriate button for me to end the transaction.
 
The next time nothing is working. Can't even find the slot. Just tap it, the clerk says. I tap the machine with my finger. No, the card. Tap it with the card. Where? Just...the clerk reaches around the machine for my card and taps it and hands it back. Or you could just use your phone.
 
Oh honey. I'm pretty sure I couldn't.
 
Did you know eye-rolling is audible if there are enough people in line? It sounds like the window shades rolling up in the old cartoons. Flap-flap-flap. Listen. I'm sorry. Nobody's sorrier than I am that I am now that dumb old person. But it will happen to you. I have no idea what form it will take, but it will happen to you.
 
Shamwowa? Could you come out here? My thing has arrived but the stupid drone won't drop it until I pay for it. How do I do that?
 
Oh, Grandma. We've been over this. You just think at it. You just think your full name really hard followed by your PUTZ number.
 
I did that.
 
This time don't think about an elephant. It's a security step. If you think about an elephant it won't release. You're doing it again. Here, let me.
 
Shamwowa glances into the sky and the package floats down. Grandma snatches it off the delivery port and huffs away, red-faced.
 
When the multiple duplicate charges generated by her flatulence show up on the invoice, she can always get Shamwowa to straighten it out. 
 

27 comments:

  1. You got it, Murr! In the early years of our swiping our own cards with the stripe, it seemed there was a conspiracy among merchants: no two merchants used systems with the same requirements. My bane is gasoline pump systems. No matter how hard I look at the little icon, it is not clear to me whether the strip is supposed to be to the sky or to the ground (but, then, I have troubles with all sorts of iconography.)

    Now, ordering online is a little easier even though it includes the "no two systems alike" and "what the heck does that mean?" issues. At least there are no witnesses to my old-woman issues.

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    1. Cop Car, I have problems deciphering icons also. To the person who created the icon, it may seem obvious what it means. To me, it does not. Thank goodness that I can hover my cursor over an icon on a computer page and it deciphers it for me. Even so, I wonder aloud that it looks nothing like what its supposed to represent.

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    2. I do not believe I have ever successfully pulled into a gas station and acquired gas all by myself. As long as I don't leave Oregon, I'm golden.

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  2. There was a time I was well known for my ability with electronics. Now I have to try hard to remember how to start my car.

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  3. This is especially amusing as yesterday (on my way home from my brand new dentist's office which I plan to blog about as they nicely treated me like an old man and I'm not), I spied a stack of change on top of a US mailbox. It was one quarter, 3 pennies, 2 dimes. Did someone run out of stamps and mail something anyway, and leave that for the postman? I hope not, as I swiped it. When I got home, I realized this is the first coins I've held in.. I don't know how long. The only place where I still use cash is at my barber--I always stop at the ATM along the way and suck out a twenty for him. Anyway...I dealt with my own Shamwowa yesterday, so I know those drones are comin'!

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    1. Incidentally, I have, more than once as a letter carrier Moving The Nation's Mail, been given an envelope with the correct change for a stamp taped to it.

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    2. I love postal people! We need to thank them for their service like we do our military. Murr, I knew there was something extra about you... :^)

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    3. Farthest thing from the military here, though. I am not brave. The five dog bites were plenty.

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  4. Audible eye-rolling.... vintage Murr! I’ve never figured the tap-the-chip-card thingy but I can do most everything else ok. Until they start the shamwowa thingy.

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  5. We got a new credit card machine with a separate card reader so we, the employees, don't have to touch that Covid infected credit card. We do have to walk people through the procedure, however, which could translate into the skill of being able to write technical manuals for the riff raff. Except when I go to another store then I am the riff raff because I can't figure out their machine.

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    1. That's it. I'm just staying home. I can't bear the humiliation.

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  6. I have one of those tappy cards. I use the self-serve check-out and as soon as my local grocer has tappy card capability, I'm going to test-drive that thing without any witnesses. I married a man who has all of his cards on his phone. Go figure.

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    1. Can't figure. I don't understand any of this. I've never done self-serve checkout either, but part of that is a (slightly) moral issue.

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  7. I never had any trouble adjusting to the card readers, but I never use the credit option since that generates a charge fee on my account, ditto the tap'n'go option, it's credit and generates a charge fee on top of the amount charged. I always use the debit option which requires the extra step of entering my PIN and I always get a receipt because at the end of the day I take out my note book and deduct the receipts from the balance of my account.
    If you are squinting at the machines you may need stronger glasses.

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  8. Reminds me of a line in the Netflix show "The Kominsky Method" where Norman is struggling with a card reader. Sandy says, "We've outlived swiping."

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    1. LOL! I LOVE that show! I wish they would make more episodes, but probably a lot of shows fell by the wayside because of the pandemic.

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    2. I watched that show but missed that line. Thanks!

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  9. Have you mastered using TV and DVD remotes yet. They still often confound me.

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    1. Do we still do DVDs? Tell you what. I have about five remotes I can't throw away stashed in a cabinet. I don't know what they do but don't want to find out what happens if they go away.

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  10. River: in the good ol' USofA the merchant pays the credit card fee, and we get a 1% to 2% kickback from the credit card company. But, I suspect we may be paying an extra 2% or more up front.
    Except when it comes to chickens. There are economies of scale involved.

    Costco alone sells a billion (1 Billion!) rotisserie chickens a year in this country. The mind boggles.

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  11. For the time being, I draw the line at using my phone for transactions. What happens when it runs out of juice unexpectedly? Or gets a virus? Or I drop it and the screen cracks? OK, I'll do stripe swiping and chip reading, but anything more high-falutin' than that seems too technologically risky.....

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  12. You and I, Ed, are going to have the last cash stash.

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