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Sunday, January 06, 2008
Up and Down


I think that as dull as they may seem, psychiatrists have a lot of fun doing what they do. I mean what more fun can you have than sitting for an hour listening to a kook talk about his repressed memories while you doodle on a pad long enough to then say "Looks like our time is up for today...but I think you've made brilliant progress!" So with my innate powers of observation, I decided to watch the world in motion, and noticed a very funny thing indeed.

ATMs are really wonderful things, saving us all the hassle of driving to the bank and having to deal with incompetent clerks. But what's more fun is observing people at ATMs. After observing 472 people and writing down 122 PIN codes, I've managed to loosely categorize people based on their ATM skills - feel free to rob this list and post around:
  1. The Non-Believer: this type of person withdraws cash, and when they pick up their account balance receipt, they stare in disbelief at it for several long seconds, sometimes even minutes, wondering where the hell their money has gone to. This may be followed up by a second transaction where they re-print the receipt to check if the machine was wrong.
  2. The Rich Bitch: for this type of person, money is a trivial matter, and the ATM is more like a slot machine. This person gets their money, slips it into their Gucci wallet, and strolls away, leaving their 6 figure account balance receipt for the next person to drool over.
  3. The Pauper: the pauper spends wisely, and thus withdraws wisely. But however careful they are with their money, at some point in the month their account balance is steadily heading in the 2 digit zone. So when they withdraw money and then look at their receipt, they crush it into a tiny ball and throw it away, simply because they don't want to believe that they're broke.
  4. The Psycho: these people generally freak me out a little bit. They will wait for 15 minutes to make sure that there is no one near the ATM within a 10 meter radius, and when they are entering their PIN, they shield the keypad and look over their shoulder several times to make sure no one is looking. These people save each ATM receipt, forward emails regarding 'YOUR PIN CODE IS RECORDED BY THE CAMERA THAT LOOKS LIKE A PAMPHLET HOLDER' and change their PIN weekly to match a chromosome in their body.
On another note, don't you just hate it when people say ATM Machine? Think about it...


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Outed at 8:32 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Blogger Parv said...
You forgot to mention "The Reluctant Novice" - the guy who deems every trip to the ATM as a new and scary experience.

He's the one that holds up the queue, as he struggles to decipher the instructions on the screen, mumbles the numbers/instructions to himself, rechecks his entry, is confused by cash payment or deposit, mumbles again, and eventually asks for assistance from the irate guy behind him. And he's the guy who needs to be reassured that his envelope deposit will make it into the right account...making you wonder how such a person was ever given an 'ATM machine' card.
2:31 PM  
LOL Nick, you got it right!

I was going to add the incompetent ATM user, but I think that's what The Lady means by 'Reluctant Novice' :)

LOL too about the psychiatrist! but this Bridget could think of a couple of stuff that are.. marginally more fun ha! ;)
7:38 PM  
Blogger Em said...
so true!
12:41 AM  
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