I had reason to withdraw some cash this morning. Nothing anyone needs to know about, especially not the authorities. Just… reasons.
Luckily, I was passing through the city, which is one of the few places my Very Large Bank still maintains a branch, let alone a cash machine. My Very Large Bank has decided to get out of the business of real money because, I dunno, it costs too much or something.
So, there I was, at the cash machine, card in hand trying to withdraw the folding stuff. The first hurdle I hit was a message telling me there wasn’t enough money in the account.
Bullshit.
I knew exactly how much was in the account because I had just checked it.
Trued again.
Same message.
I climbed through the on-screen decision tree, looking for some button I could push to make everything better, discovering after five or six frustrating minutes that there was nothing I could do because the fucking bank had decided to link my card to the wrong account.
I did some breathing exercises and tried again, this time hitting the ‘right’ account. Card error, the machine told me. More breathing. I fell back to the app, which allows you to turn your phone into a card. System error, the machine told me.
More breathing.
Honestly, my daily meditation practice has been a godsend.
I moved to another machine. This one considered giving me some money but couldn’t quite make up its mind. After two minutes, it decided it, too, was having a System Error and shut down.
For the next few minutes, I decided to forego my breathing exercises and indulge in some cursing and shouting at the Very Large Bank, as it seemed they had ‘withdrawn’ the amount I was asking for without ponying up the cash.
Luckily, that was just another Systems Error.
I did some more breathing. I tried a third machine.
After a lot of thinking, about two minutes by my watch, it finally gave up the cash.
Total time: eighteen minutes.
Rage, fear and loathing induced - incalculable.