After my penniless week and the subsequent celebratory weekend (in which I undid all the good money saving I had achieved prior) I thought I’d really got the cashless existence down to a fine art again. I’d managed to stop myself popping into EAT every time I walked past for a contactless coffee, I’d resisted making up a minimum card spend at a bar with an extra large drink that I don’t really need – I’d even bothered to take my own very basic lunch to work!
Everything was going swimmingly and a lot of my new habits had lasted through into this week, I could actually imagine myself saving money by the time I next get paid!
That was until Wednesday when everything became undone.
The details are vastly unnecessary to this post and, more importantly, horrific enough for me to not want to retell the hell so I will be brief… for once!
Essentially, after texting my girlfriend just before lunchtime, I received an almost incomprehensible reply from someone lambasting me with insults and laughing that it wasn’t said girlfriend, it was in fact someone who had robbed her.
Taken over by sweltering rage and helplessness I text back asking who this was and what had happened (an utterly pointless exercise that only exacerbated the problem further). More abuse and truly horrendous anecdotes about Netta’s fate followed over the following couple of hours and somewhere between calling the police and googling the enquiries number for Tooting A&E I decided I needed something to eat. I held on to that feeling until I finally found out that she had been pick-pocketed and was actually fine just phoneless and pissed off.
With a sigh of great relief and thankfulness I put down the phone to the cops and grabbed my coat. I deserved a Triple Chocolate Belgian Muffin and nothing was going to stand in the way of me and my squidgy baked goods. Not after the shit I’d just been through.
I made a B-line to Spitalfields Tesco to buy my prize for ‘Most fretting boyfriend in the world… ever’ and got into the queue to pay, eager to get back to the office, make a cup of tea and squander a good 10 minutes before I feel too guilty and get back to work.
As always, I chose the automated checkout instead of the people checkout (I still find the robo-till doesn’t judge you for charging a 90p muffin to your card like a person does). As the shopper in front of me picked up their goods and walked away I approached – the till was just finishing reminding the man to take his change that it was very grateful for him choosing Tesco – an odd sentiment from a stationary robot.
As I went to swipe my delightfully delectable muffin the till reminded the man before me to take his change again. So I waited a moment in silence, hoping it would go back to the start soon enough. The woman spoke again, asking him to take his change. I thought it must have been broken and I was about to rejoin the queue for another till when the automated, over-loud woman’s voice said,
“Please take your change, notes are dispensed beneath the scanner.”
Looking down, I saw a ratty old £5 note sat in the little conspicuous money tray and the man in front of me had clearly forgotten to expect in return for however much money he fed the contraption.
I wasn’t sure what to do.
The man was long gone, and the person behind the one manned till was far enough away from me for him to come and solve the problem. I had no problem picking the fiver up and making the till work again, I just didn’t know what to do with the £5!
I casually placed it behind the robo-till whilst I bought my muffin by card (not needing to hang around for anything more than a receipt) and went to give it to the man behind the till.
As I explained what had happened he looked at me in complete disbelieve, as if it was the first time he’d seen anyone do something that wasn’t a direct effort to benefit themselves. He frankly asked me, “So why aren’t you keeping it? I don’t know what do with it. The guy won’t come back you know?”
I told him about not using cash ever and he looked at me even more inquisitively before very warily taking the £5 from me and slowly putting it behind him by the cigarettes as if he was expecting a post-humous Beedles About at any moment.
Walking back to the office I thought about how I’d completely taken for granted the issue of losing money whilst living a cashless life; if someone loses a card or a wallet full of cards it is a pain in the backside but completely rectifiable – even if the cards are somehow used, the electronic transactions mean that the processes in traceable and excusable and the user doesn’t necessarily lose a penny.
But the man in Tesco, or the person that leaves their bag on a bus or unfortunate souls that are robbed or mugged will lose the cash that they have on their person and, in most cases, will be expected to write it off as an irreconcilable loss. Why on earth are people carrying cash around with them when misplacing it means losing it entirely? If you can survive by carrying a couple of worthless pieces of plastic around instead of the direct property of ‘money’, why wouldn’t you choose the first?
Seems a bit silly to me.
The muffin was jolly lovely by the way.
3 Comments
March 1, 2009 at 10:06 am
Just passing by.Btw, you website have great content!
_________________________________
Making Money $150 An Hour
March 17, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I prefer cash because it is anonymous. I dont like the thought that several services can easily check on where I spend money (even though I do not have anything to hide).
May 2, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Mmmh, Louis does have a point – yet another Big Brother aspect. All our eating, drinking and smoking habits could so easily end up on our NHS records.
We do have a robot Tesco mini market in east Devon. Sometimes on my way to Bridge class I’ve had to use it in the early morning – I hate it. It’s a polite but forceful bully. It overcharges and if you request help no-one comes. So one day when it dispensed change for £10 instead of £5 I pocketed the lot. It serves Cur Terry Leahy right!