DENIED

I just got back from Wal*Maracas. I was buying more tape and plastic masking for the car, and litter for Aleph.

On the way to the cashier, I debated using the self-checkout. No, I figured—I wouldn't. There's no reason to get involved in that whole mess¹.

Anyway, I got into the shortest line; there was only a guy with two kids, and they only seemed to have one or two items. After ringing them up, the gentlemen tried to run his card through the reader.

It errored twice in a row—couldn't read the stripe. So, the cashier cancelled this and tried it through the machine. This needed a manager's approval², so we had to wait for the manager to come down and unlock the machine.

After unlocking, the bank denied his debit card. Twice.

All this for $3.17 worth of crap.

And what's the worst part? He had a $5 in his pocket the entire time. Thanks, fucker.

¹ I'm reserving this for a future post. I'm not very good at the self-checkout system.
² It seems the point-of-sale (POS teehee) machines automatically alert the manager when input is necessary. No more of this, "need a manager to lane π/4, please."