School For The Gifted

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So I go downstairs today to use the ATM next to my office’s building. This particular bank branch closes at 3:00(!), and has one of those ATM lobbies that locks, and allows you to enter after swiping your card.

I see two people enter the lobby ahead of me by doing just that. I’ve used this ATM about a thousand times. So what do I do? If you guessed, “Grab the door and try to open it without swiping your card,” you might be a winner!

So I wait for this couple to finish their transaction. They go to leave, and don’t realize that you have to push a button to open the door to leave. I think to myself, “You have to push the button under the sign that says, ‘Push button to exit.’” (You can see where this is going.) They push the button and leave. I do my stuff at the ATM, turn around . . . and try to push the door open without pushing the damned button.

Note to brain: This body is useless. Find another subject for continued experimentation.

2

Well, if nothing else, you’ve made me feel like less of a retard for asking that manniquen at Macy’s for directions to the menswear department.

3

Last night I was in Chinatown. For reasons unknown to me, many of the ATM vestibules in Chinatown (and in little Korea, now that I think about it) require you to put your ATM card in “upside down” to open the door – that is, the stripe must be down and facing left, and the writing on the card will appear upside down and on the right.

A couple was stymied at a vestibule because they kept sticking the card in the reader the wrong way. I calmly, as nicely as I could, explained the proper way to do it and proceeded to demonstrate.

Yep. Got it wrong. Second try, also wrong. I felt like taking my money and giving it to someone who might possibly actually be smart enough to have earned it.

4

Sue the bank.