Here's how to swipe my vote
By Beth Teitell
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Enough already about who did or didn't do what during the Vietnam War. American voters want to hear about an issue with more relevance to today's reality, a problem that threatens to undermine the sanity of every citizen who shops. I speak, of course, of those credit card swipe machines next to the cash register - and the fact that virtually no two are alike.
Does the word QWERTY mean nothing to the retail industry?
You go to Shaw's, and the magnetic stripe's supposed to face up and be on the left. At CVS, it goes down and to the right. Or maybe it's the other way around. Sometimes ``yes'' is called ``enter'' and sometimes it's not. Sometimes you need to hand the card to the cashier after you've swiped, and sometimes you don't.
And that's not all. You can correctly tap ``credit'' with the tethered stylus, only to find yourself sent down the ``debit'' path, the machine insisting you punch in a PIN when of course you have none. Or, through no fault of yours, your stripe may have lost its juice, and the cashier may have to punch in your 16-digit number manually (for younger readers, this is when a person does something by hand), which will so thoroughly exhaust her that she'll need to go On Break, and the whole line will shut down, with no provisions made for those who've been waiting for 15 minutes or longer. And this will be seen as your fault.
John Edwards got it wrong. There aren't two Americas.
There are four - one for every possible orientation of your credit card at the
local swiperia.
Why can't we all just get along? I wondered this the other day, as I zipped my card up and down to no effect (other than kicking off a repetitive motion injury in my charging wrist). I'd already sensed hostility from the person behind me in line (she'd practically bruised one of my peaches while slamming down the plastic divider) and I could feel an entire line of eyes boring into my left temple as I studied the illustration of the disembodied hand holding the credit card on the terminal.
I swiped again, but still nothing. The cashier grabbed the card from me - ``idiot!'' was her unspoken sentiment - swiped it herself and then reached around the terminal to punch ``enter'' before I'd even had a chance to study my receipt.
I'm not sure if swipe-machine consistency is a Democratic or Republican issue, but there's one thing I do know: The candidate who can standardize swiping has my vote.
