Financial uncertainties
The clock is ticking. Serious deadlines for holiday shopping are at hand, and my big purchase today was a frozen bird. I couldn’t face the stress of a shopping mall, so I washed my winter coat instead. No coat, no travel; MeteoMedia confirms that it is too cold to go ‘a wandering along the mountain trail without suitable attire. No coat, stay home. Simple.
Actually we did go out a little earlier to buy lots and lots of frozen comfort foods. You know – Nanaimo bars, and bacon-wrapped scallops, and bagle-bits, and other things that don’t fit into any category of the Canadian Food Guide but that are a diversion from the usual meat and potatoes kind of diet.
All went well until we reached the checkout, and the little debit machine assured my wife, three times, that she had insufficient funds. This made no sense, as she had verified things via the Internet before we ever left home. Money galore (not really, but it sounds so good at this time of year). Here we are with frozen foods piled as high as an elephant’s eye. Off to the next building where an Instant Teller did its usual robotic task of spewing cash.
Serious doubt follows such financial uncertainties. We obviously weren’t destitute (the poor young girl at the cash register had begun to doubt our good intentions by then). A cash payment paved the way to a discussion with the owner, on the integrity of his debit card machine. Were we about to take part in some hidden camera program, or was there a more nefarious intent?
He did take the time to patiently explain (it was closing time) how easy it was to exchange the card reader in certain retail locations, but that he assumed we had (more likely) fallen into that grey area of “transactions outside the usual pattern” by shopping more than twice in the same day. Holidays do that…
In the end, all was forgiven, we returned home with the booty ahd just a touch of doubt. Our bank transaction list will be subject to scrutiny for the next few days.
