Can someone explain to me the rationale for writing checks? I’m not talking about the check for the sewer bill or the neighborhood boy who mows your lawn. I’m talking about when you go to the grocery store, the hardware store, WalMart …
Okay, this one’s been brewing for a while. Years, in fact. Percolating, if you will, on the back burner in the hope that it would soon be obsolete, extinct and otherwise defunct. But yesterday I hit the boiling point. At fucking WalMart no less.
I hate going to WalMart. I didn’t want to go to WalMart, but it’s the only purveyor of mini Heath Bars within ten miles of my office. I’m addicted to Heath Bars. They have the bags of mini ones. Bite sized morsels of English toffee smothered in milk chocolate … so good … so right …
So I just wanted to breeze in and breeze out (Ha!) with the Heath Bars and then sit in my car and gobble a half dozen of them like a fiend. But I get to the checkout and there’s this beer bellied dude ahead of me with his chubby daughter and his WD-40 and aspirin and shotgun shells and frozen dinners. I specifically chose this line out of the 15 billion available (all jam packed by the way) because it was a dude and not a lady. Dude looks like a lady! Well, no, this dude didn’t look like a lady – but he paid like a lady.
That’s right, the dude pulled out his checkbook. Now, I don’t feel I’m being sexist here because, to the best of my recollection, every check-writing fucker I’ve ever seen has been a woman. Young guys use plastic, old guys use cash – typically. And I’ve got to hand it to the ladies, at least the majority of you fill out the “Pay to” and “Date” ahead of time – but not this fucker. This fucker didn’t even have his own pen.
He waits until the very last item is rung up, then he asks for a pen. And because they have the CONVENIENT little touchpads for plastic users, the pen is evidently not standard issue for every register. So checkout chick has to root around under the register and ultimately borrow a pen from a co-checkout chick. Then the fucker starts the check-writing process. Meanwhile, I’m noticing that any one of the adjacent lines would have been a better choice in terms of speed and CONVENIENCE and all the little men inside my head are now throwing hissy fits and cursing each other out with extreme prejudice. ”Uh … what was the total again?” Fucker!
What seemed like an hour later, the fucker forks over this pathetic little IOU – without his driver’s license. Checkout chick reminds him … He digs in the wallet … She writes down the numbers … Notices it’s an out-of-state license … gotta call a supervisor …
Now I’m sweating. Literally sweating, in fucking WalMart. And I’m thinking about writing a check of my own – that my BUTT may, or may not, cash. Tarantino-esqe samurai bloodbath fantasies. Waaaa-POW! Just rip the fucker’s heart out of his chest, right in front of his chubby little daughter. I did feel sorry for her, though, because she’s probably destined for a life of fatness and stupidity.
Anyway, the supervisor came over and gathered some additional information, which she punched into a little handheld computer device. Technology!
So, please, help me understand. In this age of technological CONVENIENCE, why do we persist with the check writing? Now, if you’re over, say, 65, I’ll let you slide under the grandfather rule. But the rest of you fuckers have some ‘splainin’ to do. I know, you like balancing everything out right there on the spot. Knowing your balance and whatnot. Okay, I’ve got a crazy idea. Why don’t you just use a debit card – bear with me, now – then take your receipt back to your car or your home or your workplace AND BALANCE YOUR CHECKBOOK ON YOUR OWN FUCKING TIME! Because whether you realize it or not, the mere act of standing in front of me in line means that it’s my time too. You’re wasting precious minutes of my life, and I don’t know how many I have left.
Fucker.