Friday, November 7, 2014

There's Also No ".00" Key



The ATM only dispenses bills, yet I have to enter my withdrawal to the cent.  Why?  


There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this.  It's because...uhm...reasons.  


So, everybody knows that ATMs have replaced actual human interaction for a variety of banking transactions.  We no longer have to actually look at somebody or, heaven forbid, talk to them in order to deposit money into the bank or withdraw cash for day to day purchases.  It's a remarkably freeing experience being able to conduct that kind of business without the judging eyes of a bank teller on me the whole time.  "Ooo...you want to cash a check for a whole 41 dollars.  Ladies and gentlemen, we have a BIG SPENDER here!"  I just don't need that.  

In order to make the ATM process as hands-free as possible for the bank, since they don't want to pay tellers just as much as I don't want to deal with them, the machines are outfitted with only two types of bills.  They have 20 dollar bills and 5 dollar bills.  So, if you have less than 5 dollars in the bank, you're out of luck.  You can deposit whatever amount you want, but you can only take out money in increments of 5 dollars.  

So why is it, then, that when the machine asks me how much money I'd like to take out, that I have to input the two trailing zeroes in the cents columns?  The machine could not dispense the change if I wanted it to, so why is this even an option, leave alone a requirement?  It seems like nothing more than 2 extra keystrokes that benefit absolutely nobody.  The bank knows I'm not withdrawing cents, I can't get cents from the machine, it's a total waste of time, and an opportunity to make mistakes.  The 0 is right below the 8 on most ATMs, and the more times I have to press the 0 key (and let's be honest...a high-roller like me...I'm pressing the zero an awful lot of times), the more chances I have to mess up and bump the 8 by accident.  Then the machine has to go through the role rigmarole of telling me that I can't have 8 cents...or 80 cents...or 8 dollars...you get the idea...before asking me to enter the amount again.  Guess what...it's still going to be in dollars. 

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