Cash or Credit?

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‘Cash or credit?’
‘Confidence,’ I replied.
‘Excuse me?’ said the cashier baffled.

 You heard it right.  That is the fun part of shopping.  Paying. The cashier is addressing me but ears behind me are all rabbit and praying that it should be cash.  Cash is confidence even if I’m paying with tips from waitressing or washing cars. Counting the loonies, quarters and dimes drives people in the check out line crazy because they are in a rush to go home and do nothing.

But they can live with that because silver is still confidence.  It is right there on the cashier’s desk, unlike debit and credit cards.  That is another planet, venturing into the unknown, a keeping your fingers crossed or lord help us all situation.
The machine can reject my debit card because I thought I had $30 left.  That is temporary insanity because banks are like gardeners, they airbrush the $30 dollars for their administrative fees, which are punishment fees in fact, for 2-digit account balances.

 ‘You can try again’, says the cashier.

Of course, she doesn’t mean it.  It is in the training script.  Stores tell cashiers to be sensitive otherwise customers will run to the competition in the same mall or go to the Amazon jungle.  What is insensitive though, is me taking out another debit or credit card knowing full well they might not be liquid.
The line behind me is seething.  I don’t have eyes in my back, but I can feel the heat, the frustration, the vexation.  I bet they are looking at each other now.  And the morale of the story is? Stores should change the script.  Cashiers should say:

 Confidence or credit?

 By:  Nonqaba waka Msimang.

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