jokes only people who’ve been broke and struggling will understand.
I spend from a different bank account than the one I get my paycheck in, so I need to refill my spending account periodically.
Usually when I try to pay and it’s declined. So I get declined from time to time, and it’s not because I’m broke. It course I’m not explaining all that to a cashier, instead I just panic.
sometimes banks will randomly reject payments for “security reasons” even if there is enough money.
For these cases I keep a tiny bag filled with colourful pieces of paper and metal discs in various sizes. Strangely the cashier seems to accept them as means of payment.
I tried this once. security kicked my ass and told me to not come back with monopoly money again.
Funnily enough, my country’s bills do look like Monopoly money. So much so that I tried to get smart with my friend by offering him some bills for his Boardwalk, but he slapped down my shit and told me to get some get real Monopoly money. :(
you have never been poor, have you?
Obglatory not OP, but… When I was younger and pretty broke I preferred paying cash. It was very easy to keep track of my spending rate and there was no risk of getting declined.
Interestingly I read somewhere (from a Behavioral Economics book, I think) that people who pay in cash in average spend less than people who pay by card.
Paying cash involves literally giving out something physical which you own, whilst paying by card is just a number in a screen that you say yes to, and it’s theorized that the actually parting with something physical like cash makes people more wary of spending because of the higher unpleasent feeling of losing something.
Certainly looking at myself, actually counting and giving away €100 in notes does feel more unpleasant that merelly saying yes to a screen showing the number 100.
All this to say that for poor people it actually makes even more sense to pay in cash.
That’s exactly why I preferred cash when I was in my 20s, but there’s a catch. Completely avoiding the credit system isn’t good for longer term finance either. In the US at least, no credit can be worse than bad credit. This makes it hard to escape the poverty trap even if you get finances are in order.
There’s another catch if you’re not using a card with rewards. (As I understand it this is mostly a U.S. thing, other countries don’t do this.)
Every year when I take my big vacation my wife and I get 1-1.5 of our international business class tickets paid for by rewards on one card and about half of our hotel suites (about 10-11 nights) paid for by rewards on another card. If you’re paying cash or using a card without rewards, you’re paying for my vacation.
Places with different prices for cash and cards are vanishingly rare. Mostly because card processing companies try to penalize places that do this. So everyone pays higher prices to pay for the higher processing fees for reward cards. If you aren’t getting something back you’re just paying for people that are.
I have to wonder what kind of child hears someone say that they pay in cash rather than use a card and assume that they’re rich.
I have to imagine you are so fiscally deficient that the 2% or so card transaction fee doesn’t even register to you. Did you know that especially some Mom and Pop shops will charge less when using cash for that very reason? Gas stations even advertise cash rates for gas.
Ignorance and arrogance are a horrible combo.
I’ve never seen a shop have different prices for different payment methods in my life.
Is that an America thing?
Not in my experience. There is a credit card fee, but the stores pay it. I’ve heard of places offering a cash discount for that reason, but haven’t seen it in years. If you paid cash now, you’d just be paying the credit card price.
I only see this at gas stations and rural restaurants now in the US southwest.
Yeah I definitely have seen it as gas stations in the past, I can’t recall seeing it lately.
If you remember computer shows, the vendors there would often show a cash price and then charge more for cards.
I thought doing that sort of thing was against their merchant agreement though. But maybe not.
No, I live in New Zealand, and a 2% surcharge for credit cards is pretty common.
EFTPOS transactions are always free.
Have been. Still not rich.
Money is very physical. When you give it away you can see that there is less remaining. Helps to keep track of your expenses.
For me it’s more the people in the queue behind me.
No doubt. There could be 4 or 5 random people with glocks behind you rather than just one highly trained cashier and an agent.
👀
The other day the payment wasn’t approved for me (broke AF). The terminal beeped, the checkout counter went to a “Please wait for a representative” screen and the tower next to my checkout station went blinking green.
Luckily a very nice lady from the store yelled from her workstation if I needed help. I said I didn’t, just broke and needed to use another card. She reset my counter with her terminal and I was good to go. But it definitely feels like you did something really wrong.
Not as bad as running through the checkout without paying tho. I saw a man with his daughter of about 5 or 6 I think. She had one of those kid carts and tried to run out as the father was trying to pay for the sandwiches they were buying. All of the alarms went off, flashing lights, beeping gates, audible alert, the whole shebang. The kid got really scared as everyone just laughed as the father said: Hold on honey, we actually need to pay. The staff could easily disable the alert, but had to manually reset the gates. They needed to call it off on their headsets as well and two times staff came running to check if everything was alright. That’s not a mistake the kid will make in the future I bet.
the fact that it locks the terminal on failed payment is just bad UX. I’m sure there is some reason fraud wise to do that but, I’ve never had a self check lock on me due to it. I would likely shop elsewhere if it ever did.
I’ve never not seen that happen? It’s probably to prevent fraud and a lot of the time it’s just old people who fumble the payment and need actual assistance?
As long as the store person there can reset it remotely for me it’s fine, then I don’t have to wait and they don’t need to come over.
I think it’s different when the payment times out, I’ve had that happen when the payment terminal crashed for no reason. Then it automatically resets back, so you can try again. But a failed payment is different from a rejected payment.
That’s weird to me, the self checks in my area will say payment declined or payment rejected and then ask for an alternative. I’m not sure the benefit of locking the terminal for it. Like sure flag the host in case assistance is needed but, I don’t see the need to lock it.
People don’t think it be like that, but it do.
I always check my account before going to pay just to avoid this. I don’t even leave my house to buy something before I’ve made sure I have enough money.
It can happen even then. A few years ago, my wife and I had lunch at a burrito place, then walked across the shopping center and did our grocery shopping. Same card was declined the second time, no issue on our end, plenty of credit limit available, just some fraud trigger went off at the bank (I don’t remember details).
deleted by creator
Back in the old days the cashier would have a booklet with valid credit card numbers. Sometimes they’d have to call the bank, and occasionally, the bank would tell them to confiscate the card.
Why I always carry cash too.
This comment here reminded me that I actually have cash in my wallet. Thank you!
I gotta say, moments like these made me consider communism
I wouldn’t worry so much for the cashier as the people behind me, if looks could kill!
I do some fistpumps when it clears now, i’m spending my money, on stuff I want, LETS GOOOOO
u/lawrence - you have the most bland, vanilla sense of humor! You probably think watered down ketchup is too spicy.
thanks for making the community dull and unfunny - ban yourself or change the community name to comicstrips_for_9_year_olds
It hurt you didn’t it?
Did you make this account just to be a dick?
For the record, yes there are people that do this. They get banned so have to make a new account every time they want to be a dick.
Going by the username, probably.
I wonder where your username could have come from.
One of life’s great mysteries.
most useless novelty account. 0/1, blocked and moved on.
You are whats wrong with the internet
I would have just moderated this as ‘not polite’, but the comment was so strange that the admin banned the guy.
I like your comics Lawrence, and I hope whatever’s going on in his life gets better
Going by the username, they don’t seem to be interested in engaging in good faith.
Removed by mod
Thanks for, at least, trying to make this place less boring by making such interesting comments. You made at least 1 person laugh.
