Cash and Carry
Man I long for the day when you paid CASH for everything.. good, cold hard cash for the merchandise, cash for the hard goods, cash for the fancy goods, cash for... well you get the idea.
This rant brought to you by the NY transit system.
See I went to NYC for the past week( more about that later) and I had to deal with the METRO Card. The metro card has replaced the wonderful tokens. Tokens that jingle jangle in your pocket. Tokens that ALWAYS work, and you can look in your pockets and see how many you have. If I lost a token, it was MY fault and I could accept that.
But the metro card... Ah it's evil. Which is to say it has a magnetic strip which APPEARS to be easy to scratch. See if you've ever had a bank card you know sometimes magnetic strips get damaged or worn down... and that's what happened with my metro card. I had put what I thought was a moderate amount on the card, figuring I was going to be to in NYC for 5 days I put 6 trips on the card. I knew I could put more on later but thought 6 would be a good number. On about my 3rd trip with the card, it crapped out. The turnstiles refused to accept my card even though I knew there was more money on the card. I talked to the booth person, and he was able to verify that there indeed was MONEY on the card, but he couldn't just GIVE my money on a new card. I pointed out that I was just visiting New York and didn't want them to give me a NEW card... he told me just to fill out the form with my out of state address and they'd send me $.
So I get a new card... and this time I put very little on the card and try to keep track of what money I put on the card so that I wouldn't lose too much money if this happened again... and of course it happened again at the worst possible time.
On thursday night, I had NO money in my wallet having spent it all BUT I had $2( which equals one train trip) on the Metro Card and I checked the internet and saw that there was a Bank of America right next to Penn Station... so I thought I was all set I'd take the train to Penn Station, get my money, get some Popeye's and go back to Boston. Of course since I'm blogging about this... it didn't work out like that. I ran my card through a turnstile and AGAIN it didn't recognize my card. ARGH! I tried it a couple of more times and it didn't seem to work... so I walked around the block to the Station's booth person, and I tried the card on HIS reader and it said I didn't have any money on the card. GRR. So odds are it worked one of the times I swiped it and I didn't notice it. I did try to see if I could use the turnstile AFTER I found out there was no money on the card- but no such luck.
This forced me to go to a nearby bank, pay them a 1.50 surcharge to get money out. That of course doesn't include the amount MY bank will charge for using another bank's atm. I then had to stand on line... get one of my $20s changed to get a one-time only metro card.
Oh and the one time only's only work for 2 hours so it's not like I could get a bunch of them and use them instead of a regular Metro card.
I just got very angry about this whole arrangement, esp. as the MBTA system is trying to introduce the same thing- called the charlie card( named for the song Charlie on the MTA). I like having tokens. I like paying with CASH, that way I'm aware of what I have and what i can spend. Technology is a wonderful thing at times, but at the same time it's often not to be trusted( yeah- I read Handmaid's Tale and that got me paranoid in new and interesting ways).
This rant brought to you by the NY transit system.
See I went to NYC for the past week( more about that later) and I had to deal with the METRO Card. The metro card has replaced the wonderful tokens. Tokens that jingle jangle in your pocket. Tokens that ALWAYS work, and you can look in your pockets and see how many you have. If I lost a token, it was MY fault and I could accept that.
But the metro card... Ah it's evil. Which is to say it has a magnetic strip which APPEARS to be easy to scratch. See if you've ever had a bank card you know sometimes magnetic strips get damaged or worn down... and that's what happened with my metro card. I had put what I thought was a moderate amount on the card, figuring I was going to be to in NYC for 5 days I put 6 trips on the card. I knew I could put more on later but thought 6 would be a good number. On about my 3rd trip with the card, it crapped out. The turnstiles refused to accept my card even though I knew there was more money on the card. I talked to the booth person, and he was able to verify that there indeed was MONEY on the card, but he couldn't just GIVE my money on a new card. I pointed out that I was just visiting New York and didn't want them to give me a NEW card... he told me just to fill out the form with my out of state address and they'd send me $.
So I get a new card... and this time I put very little on the card and try to keep track of what money I put on the card so that I wouldn't lose too much money if this happened again... and of course it happened again at the worst possible time.
On thursday night, I had NO money in my wallet having spent it all BUT I had $2( which equals one train trip) on the Metro Card and I checked the internet and saw that there was a Bank of America right next to Penn Station... so I thought I was all set I'd take the train to Penn Station, get my money, get some Popeye's and go back to Boston. Of course since I'm blogging about this... it didn't work out like that. I ran my card through a turnstile and AGAIN it didn't recognize my card. ARGH! I tried it a couple of more times and it didn't seem to work... so I walked around the block to the Station's booth person, and I tried the card on HIS reader and it said I didn't have any money on the card. GRR. So odds are it worked one of the times I swiped it and I didn't notice it. I did try to see if I could use the turnstile AFTER I found out there was no money on the card- but no such luck.
This forced me to go to a nearby bank, pay them a 1.50 surcharge to get money out. That of course doesn't include the amount MY bank will charge for using another bank's atm. I then had to stand on line... get one of my $20s changed to get a one-time only metro card.
Oh and the one time only's only work for 2 hours so it's not like I could get a bunch of them and use them instead of a regular Metro card.
I just got very angry about this whole arrangement, esp. as the MBTA system is trying to introduce the same thing- called the charlie card( named for the song Charlie on the MTA). I like having tokens. I like paying with CASH, that way I'm aware of what I have and what i can spend. Technology is a wonderful thing at times, but at the same time it's often not to be trusted( yeah- I read Handmaid's Tale and that got me paranoid in new and interesting ways).
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