Will You Take A Check?

      As technology becomes more advanced, I’m feeling like the proverbial dinosaur, totally out of place.  Around Christmas, I feel this more intensely while shopping.  It’s like the traditional ways of paying for things when I was a kid—check and cash—are slowly becoming outdated.  So many young folks pay for things somehow with their smartphones or just by using their debit card.

      I have neither.

      When my wife and I tried to use a check recently at our favorite local grocery store, a confab of about three employees took place.  It appeared that two of the workers were new, so the more senior worker was taking this opportunity to teach them how to handle a person who wants to pay by check.  I felt as if we were paying in drachmas or something. 

      Never mind that they ran the check through their register, then handed it back to us.  Is that then our canceled check?  So how is that check information stored?  Can the Chinese or Russians hack your electronic database and write their own check against our account?  Scary financial times we live in.

     Then we encountered another first when we tried the express check-out line at Target.  After using self-service to ring up our order, we discovered there was no way to pay cash.  We had to flag down a clerk somewhere to help.  Is this the wave of the future?  “Sorry.  Your cash is no good here.”

     “Will you take a check?”

      “A what???”

      At our local theatre in town, they no longer employ ticket-takers nor ticket-sellers at the shows we attend.  What most people do is purchase their tickets, including their assigned seats, on-line at home or on one of those smartphones.  Then when they go to the theatre, they’re instructed to go directly to their seats.  I guess this theatre is depending on our honesty, right?

      My son sometimes orders coffee and sandwiches from Panera on-line from home.  He pays for it on-line (somehow), then when he goes to the Panera’s, the order is bagged and ready, waiting on a rack.  Again, he didn’t have to check with any staff.  He just took the order and walked out.  I guess Panera too is depending on our honesty.

      So I can be standing in a long line at Panera’s, waiting for a clerk to take my money and order, only to be passed over while the kitchen staff prepares an order they received over the internet.    Even my twenty-something nephew complained over this new world ordering system.

       He stood in a long line at Starbucks (shorter lines are one reason my wife and I prefer Tim Horton’s) waiting to just order his latte.  People would come into Starbucks, pass by my nephew right to the pick-up counter, tell them their name and they would be served their own latte before my nephew could even see the clerk past the people ahead of him in line.

      Apparently, Starbucks has an ap (app?) that allows you to order your coffee drink on-line, just the way you like it, pay for it, then let Starbucks know what time you will be in to pick it up.  Thus, avoiding long lines of dinosaurs.  Like myself.