What? You didn't notice? That's only because you probably weren't in the long lines at the corner grocery watching people scramble to figure out how to deal with an intermittently working debit machine. One or two people were lucky enough to have cash on them. Me, I was one of the few that the machine would work for (yes, my mastercard is just that good). Other people had to give up and leave. The cashiers, of course, were frustrated as hell.
People were nice to them, though. That's the advantage of using the corner grocery rather than going to a big aggravating box, I guess. Especially just before dinner on a Monday.
The fact of our world today is that most of us can't exist without the plastic. Go ahead -- have a look in your purse or wallet right now and see how much actual cash you have with you. I think I'm at about seven bucks, if I remember right. I buy almost everything with my credit card; partly because it's a good way to budget if you pay off your balance regularly, partly because I get cash back, and partly because I hate my bank so I use my debit card as little as possible. I carry a bit of cash (generally more than I have at the moment, yes, but not too much more) for emergencies. I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who's like that.
Those of you in your twenties can't possibly realise how quickly the world's changed in that regard. Just before I went to university -- think late 80s here -- my bank sent me this thing called a debit card. It meant that you could go to a machine to get cash instead of going to the bank itself. If I remember right there were two machines on campus, and luckily the one by the bookstore was for my bank. I'd go about once a week and take out enough money to cover groceries and other incidentals. There weren't any debit machines at tills, so I was still paying for everything in cash. At least I didn't have to go to the bank every week to get it.
Speaking of tills, I was a grocery cashier in high school. No debit machines, as I said. Also, no way to deal with credit cards. Cash or cheque only, boys and girls (a cheque is a piece of paper that tells the bank to pay somebody out of your account. You know, in case you've never seen one). No scanners, either. We hand-keyed in everything. Personally, I'd like to see a cashier who can do that now.
That was about twenty-five years ago. I know that twenty-five years is literally a lifetime for some of you, but if you took the twenty-five years between, say, 1950 and 1975 (or even 1960 and 1985) you'd find that nothing much had changed in the wonderful world of payment.
Things move fast nowadays, though. In two or three years I suppose we'll all be so used to transactions via smartphone that the thought of using a physical card will seem almost as weird as the idea of carrying $200 worth of bills to get groceries does now. I haven't figured out whether that's a good thing or not, but in the end it doesn't matter if I figure it out at all. It (or whatever the next big thing ends up being) will happen whether I figure or not.
And I feel old.
Cheque please.
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