I love my mother dearly. She’s a sweet lady without a nasty or thoughtless bone in her body. Think Edith Bunker with a higher IQ and about 15 years older. Everyone who meets her is crazy about her.
But God, I hate taking her to the bank. She refuses to use an ATM because she has to always have x amount of each type of bill. I took her today because she had some SS and pension checks to cash. As we stand there at the only open teller with a line forming behind us, she’s requesting x ones, y tens, z twenties - and oh, do you have any Utah quarters?
The teller informs her that she has none, but that the teller next to her (who has just started opening his window) has some. She then goes in the back to get some bills (presumably she doesn’t have enough to meet my mother’s requests).
Just as the teller at the next window motions the next customer over my mother looks at me, holds out a dollar and asks me to ask him for 4 Utah quarters. :smack: I tell her that I can’t do that so she begins to move over to him directly in the path of the next customer. I tell her “Mom, there’s another customer ahead of you”. She then moves back but, as the customer arrives at the window, asks the other teller if he can give her 4 Utah quarters.
He grabs two rolls, places them over the partition and tells my mother’s teller (who is now returning) that she owes him twenty. My mother completes her transactions, gets her quarters and we thankfully leave.
We then went to the CVS where she stood at the counter slowly and carefully going over her receipt while a long line of people waited behind her.
Am I the only one who goes through this? Is it a generational thing?
I don’t know if it’s generational or just age, but I (mildly) dread being in line behind people of a certain era. It’s not just the receipt thing. They seem to have a phobia about change and will root through their purses and change thingies forever rather than excepting a 50 cents more change than they have to.
CVS seems to be particularly bad for these. Most people see it as the type of place where you run in and grab an item or two, or pick up a prescription, but there’s a certain set of seniors who always get in front of me with their whole week’s shopping. You know, there’s a reason all that stuff doesn’t fit on the little patch of counter in front of the clerk the way it does over at Ralph’s. It’s not like it’s the only game in town, either. There’s a Target and several large grocery stores with in a few blocks, selling everything they just bought at much better prices. Maybe they just find the drug store cozier.
Why does your mom have a thing about Utah quarters?
She also does the thing with rooting through her purse for the correct change.
I don’t know what it is about the quarters. It’s not specifically Utah, that was just today, the states vary. I think she’s collecting them for some reason. I don’t know of anybody in the family who has a quarter collection but it might be for some nieces and nephews or something.
She doesn’t do most of her shopping at the CVS. It just happened to be by the bank and she needed a few small things.
I consciously try to avoid mentioning that I’m going anywhere near the bank because I afraid I’ll here something like: “Oh, while you’re there, could you pick up x ones, y fives, z tens, etc. for me? You can stop by my place for a withdrawal slip.”
I think it has something to do with age too but I don’t know what.
TikkiDad’s best friend won’t use ATM’s or debit cards and doesn’t like carrying much cash on him. Every time they go somewhere, they have to stop at the drive-through teller so he can get fifteen or twenty bucks.
Thank heaven, my 87-year-old mother almost never uses anything but her debit card any more. She gets some extra cash as she’s paying her grocery bill, and everybody’s happy. She’s quite speedy through checkout lines as a result.
Of course, the time it takes her to find the groceries in the first place is a whole different issue. :smack:
some people of a certain era don’t trust banks due to that depression thing. my mum would do the same thing, no atm card, must see teller, can’t transfer over phone etc. it got really tough when she became more and more housebound. thankfully we had a credit union in common and my name was on her acct. as well.
as to the other, add a fixed income to the depression era thinking and you have people who very, very, carefully take care of thier money.
i often told my mum she could not go to banks or stores during “office lunch hours”. if she was gonna do the count everything and want “special” money put together (she had a thing for mr. franklin). she had all day to get there, workers only had a half hour to and hour during the 11-1 lunch zone. it wasn’t fair to block the lines when you could be there at 8am to 11am and 2pm on to close.
it isn’t just depression era people. some autistic and ocd people must have things in a certain order. i’m sure there was an outbreak of “lunch” or “breaktime” when an old coworker of mine went to the bank. he would complain if his time card was off by a minute and if his check was off by a penny. it took him 2 hours to get his check cashed at the bank.
It’s not just you. I can’t tell you how many checkout lines my 85-year-old grandmother has held up while rifling through her purse long after her transaction has been completed. Mom practically had to drag her away from the register at Publix last week (Grandma was too busy sorting unused coupons to notice the line of annoyed customers behind her).
Grandma also has to buy certain items at certain stores, depending on which store is having sales that week. Last week Grandma informed Mom that we needed to stop by Publix for poppy seed rolls, then head to Sweetbay for orange juice, and then head over to Winn Dixie for some other item. She got mad when Mom (who was doing the driving) told her to pick one store for all of her shopping.
i just read a thing in a mag. for organizing your grocery shopping. i burst out laughing thinking" “who has time for that? and what if they change the aisles?”
the suggestion was that as you shop (with a list of course) you write down next to the item what aisle and where in the aisle (middle, beginning, end, port side, etc) the item was. once you had your items mapped out, when you start your new food shopping lists you would also include the where in the store it was cutting down on time in the store and impulse buys.
you can only imagine my eye roll at the thought of doing this. however it may be a fun thing for your mom. or she just may see going to the store a major fun outing and like cruising the aisles.
Believe me, when you work in retail, this is one of the first things you notice. In the first place, the fixed income means that, in some respects, maybe they do need to pinch some pennies. But then, the rifling, the checking the specific coupons, etc. take time. All of that, however, is one thing. The worst part, is that perhaps due to age, and a gradual slipping of the mind, or something… they always get things wrong, or have the incorrect coupon, or take that extra minute to rifle, or have to go back, or check with something (sometimes they even butt in to ask questions about their receipt AFTER I’ve moved on to the next customer!!). it gets sort of infuriating, but then, it’s hard to be that mad at the elderly, usually people understand, or at the most make an offhand comment. Unless it’s the after-work rush, when people are ALREADY out of patience.
One thing she has started to do is to use her debit card at the grocery store for her weekly shopping. But either myself or my brother (whoever takes her shopping that week) has to enter her pin for her. She knows the pin, and she can dial a pushbutton phone, so I don’t know what her problem is. She’s afraid of it or something.
At the bank, I think the problem may be that she expects the kind of service that she got when banks actually had enough tellers to be able to give that kind of service. She just doesn’t realize that if everyone did what she did people would wait in line for hours.
If I suggest that she use the ATM, or even volunteer to go to the ATM for her, she starts going on about how she needs x ones for the church envelopes, x fives for something I can’t even remember, etc. etc.
Everyone else gets by with ATMs, but for some reason it’s not possible for her.
She has to use a mail order pharmacy due to her insurance. Today, she was complaining about having to phone in a refill instead of simply mailing it in like she’s always done in the past.
She’s not shy. She knows how to talk on a phone, in fact she can spend hours doing so. She’s not that old, she’s used telephones her whole life.
But for some reason, in her mind, filling out a form, putting it in an envelope, sealing the envelope, and getting it mailed, is less of a hassle then making a phone call. Plus, her life-sustaining medication is then dependent on the post office getting it right.
Oh boy, my grandparents are a little bit of both things people are talking about here.
My grandpa has never gotten an ATM card, because he doesn’t trust the ATM not to screw him over somehow. He absolutely has to deal directly with a teller at the very least, preferably someone at a desk for anything more complicated than a deposit. He also trusts only the people at his old bank branch - even though he moved 45 minutes away from the old neighborhood, and there’s a branch of the same bank less than 2 minutes from where he lives now, he insists on making the trip to the old place whenever a CD comes due or whatever.
My grandma is the one who has gotten very methodical with age, and too often totally oblivious to whether people are waiting behind her or not. Part of this is related to the fact that her hands shake more often than they used to, and she has to slow down and concentrate on what she’s doing so as not to drop things. She also does the multiple store shopping thing. I asked her about that once, and she said she was in no hurry because she didn’t have much else to do, and besides it got her out of the house for longer.
My mother isn’t prone to the multiple store shopping. She uses the same supermarket for nearly everything. She even pointed out to me that going from store to store ends up costing more in gas than you save in groceries. She does like to go to Costco once every two or three months for bulk non-perishables, but that does make sense and I do it myself.
I just felt that I should add that my mother is in no way senile or demented. She’s a very smart lady (although she denies this) who I think simply has habits that her world has passed by.
I was just about to make this point. I wonder if the folks with geriatric wander lust have thought of this.
On the flip side, stores that carry too wide a variety of merchandise creep me out. Mega-Wal-marts are the worst offenders, with a full grocery store plus all the usual Walmart stuff. Seems to me like a store covering so many topics can’t do any one topic especially well.
Pullet, I’m with you on that. Places like Walmart or KMart, with their little grocery sections in the middle, don’t have the same variety or quality as a real grocery supermarket. She shops at the local Acme Supermarket (which is a major east coast grocery chain for those who don’t know. And they don’t sell rocket boots, tornado pills, or magnetic birdseed).
Oh boy can I relate. My mother no longer drives and I do 99.9% of her shopping for her. The rest is done by her when I take her and it is an ordeal.
She has to look and read everything. A ten minute trip into the dollar store for me is an hour or longer when I take her. The list is made but it flies out the window once she is in the store.
She also do not seem to notice when she is in someones way. I have to move her cart all the time to allow other people to get to something on a shelf or in the cooler because she has parked her cart and decided to read some sale sign, ad or coupon on the other side of the isle.
I can’t tell you the times I have completed all my shopping, walked around the store three times still waiting for her, decided to check out and wait in the car. The last time I took her shopping we were out for over three hours and only went to the farmers market and the dollar store. I was exhasted by the time I got home. She does not get around so good anymore but she sure takes her time in the store. This also means I have to load all her items in the car and carry them in her apartment. I don’t mind so much but after fifteen bags of canned beef stew it can get tiring and then I have my own to unload when I get home.
I am glad she now orders her cigarettes online. She used to call me every other day to pick up her smokes. Why she did that instead of buying a carton is beyond me.
She also does not like change. She mails her life insurance in and most times she is right on the cut off date. I have asked her three times to go to the website and see if the offer online payments. She pays for every other bill other than her rent online. She refuses to do it. The life insurance must be paid by check and through the mail.
I also fail to mention if I am going to the store. If I let it slip she asks if I can pick her up a couple things which means over a hundred dollar in items. She does not need any of these things. Her cupboards, freezer and fridge is already full. It is like she does not want to miss the oppurtunity to get more since I am going anyway.
My wife does this, and she’s in her late 30s. Use the ATM? Nope. Has a card, but never uses it. Almost to the point where it looks brand new when they send her the replacement. She also still writes out checks for EVERYTHING. Grocery store. Pharmacy. Tried at the Dry Cleaner and the Gas Station. Both refused. Oh, and it’s a guarantee that not only does she watch the scanner display at the checkout like a hawk, but also checks the receipt afterwards as well. Heaven help me if we’re in there doing 2 weeks of groceries. I have actually loaded the entire car and brought the cart back and gone inside to get her sometimes. The bank is another issue. She won’t use the drive up, EVER. She alsodoesn’t like to use anything but the pre-printed depsit slips from the back of the checkbook. At least she’s accepted Direct Deposit after a week of storms prevented her from visiting the bank.