Ah, the drive-thru. Thoughts of buxom young girls in tight sweaters and shorts on roller blades delivering trays of money to your car window.
Everyone loves to be given cash just for hitting a few buttons in the right order. We give monkeys bananas for hitting the right buttons, and we want our turn too! Who says we don't come from apes? People still use the ATMs out there, even though paper money really has no place in a moral society. Every store, restaurant or business will take Plastic (otherly known as Credit Cards, Debit Cards and Inter-ac Cards), yet we still have a need for cash. The all mighty buck. Kinda makes ya' feel good to have a nice thick wallet, eh? Better than a little card the size of a poker playing card (another place cash may have a chance to survive, the neighborhood underground gaming house), that is really kind of easy to lose. So, We have people who need cash, for some reason, sitting in line behind two or three other cars in a drive-thru ATM teller, using up their gasoline at a rate equivalent to driving 35 miles per hour. Ya' kinda need to have a sense of humor if you happen to need some cash and are stuck in a line-up at the local ATM drive-thru.

But, I digress. When in a drive-thru ATM, have all of your needed papers signed, card in hand, ready to attack the devil. If nobody is behind you, take your time, pay your bills, talk to the teller who really isn't there. It would be nice, though, to pull up to a speaker, say "fifty bucks in tens please" and pull up to the next window, with your purchase ready and waiting for you. Assuming you do not have a computer and Internet access, if there are people in line behind you, your bills can wait for a day or two. Making other people, usually with a deadline, places to meet and people to go, wait in their not-so-environment friendly idling cars for too long for their cash experience, isn't very nice.

It amazes me the amount of people out there who still can not figure out exactly how to use an ATM. Everybody, maybe Mormons excluded, have had to use an ATM machine at some point in their lives, and it really is quite easy. Just do what the screen tells you to do. At the end of the teller experience, the ATM even takes care to remind you to remove your cash, card and receipt from the machine. If you have all of your papers ready, are well experienced with the ATM procedures, sure, deposit your checks, pay your bills and be on your way, But if you know you and the machine just do not get along very well, leave it be for a while or for another day if there are people in line behind you. It is the proper thing to do.

Learn more about this author, Marc Phillippe Babineau.
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