Old People and Pensions

It's finally time for volume two in this epic.

Once the coffin dodger has got over the massive and time consuming (for idiots anyway) hurdle of opening their card accounts, the next stumbling block is actually using the damn thing.

Surely that shouldn't be too difficult? People have been using ATM cards for years without too many troubles.

That sadly doesn't take into account your average pensioner's lack of skill with anything new no matter how simple.

The hassle I'm going to cover in this post is the seemingly easy task of putting the card into the card reader. "Surely this won't require a whole post to go through unless it's padded with loads of unnecesary fucking swearing?" You may think. Think again.

The nearly dead are pretty shite at being organised for a start. They may queue up for five minutes but is there any forward planning going on in those wrinkly little noggins?

Nope.

You can be sure that despite the ample amount of time they've had to get preapred while queuing, they'll get to the front and then spend ages trying to find the card which will never be where they think it is. Purses, pockets, wallets and bags are all searched until the card finally resurfaces, ineviatably in the place they looked first but didn't quite look hard enough.

Next come another tricky stage of the operation that manages to catch out about 90% of all OAPs. They have to put the card into the card reader. Easy enough except they have to put it in the right way round. It's not tricky. There are only four different ways that the card will actually fit in and there's even a picture on top of the card reader showing you what way round it goes AND a dirty great big arrow on the card showing which way in it needs to go. Are these clues enough to facillitate easy card insertsion?

Not fucking likely.

Bearing in mind that there are only four different ways that the card can fit in, surely even the most brain dead should have a one in four chance and, at the very worst, take four attempts to get the card in.

Not a bloody hope.

Six or seven tries aren't uncommon. I'd love it if this were an exaggeration but sadly it's not. One old guy even tried to put the card in sideways and one just held the card up to the keypad, no doubt anticipating the touchless credit card by about three years. There are plenty who come to get both their and their spouses pensions so that means you've got to sit through this palaver TWICE! They don't learn from the first attempt. Noooo, they've then got to fuck me around for the second card too. And what makes it worse is what nearly all of them say when they finally manage to get the card in correctly:

"We should be used to this by now."

YES, YES YOU FUCKING SHOULD YOU GOLDFISH BRAINED WASTE OF EVERYTHING. A BARELY TRAINED BABOON WOULD HAVE A BETTER SUCCESS RATE THAN YOU AND WOULD SMELL LESS. SMILING AT ME AND ATTEMPTING SOME LEVITY AT YOUR OWN FUCKWITTEDNESS ISN'T HELPING THE SITUATION. "HAHAH, AREN'T I STUPID, HAHAHA, HAVEN'T I JUST STOLEN SOME OF YOUR LIFE AWAY THAT YOU COULD HAVE BEEN DOING SOMETHING LESS FRUSTRATING, MORE WORTHWHILE AND INTERESTING LIKE SORTING OUT MY RUSTY NAIL COLLECTION USING TWEEZERS."

Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnghhhhh!!!


It kinda hacks me off.

Next post in this series, putting the numbers in.