Morning adventure: ch-ching

Jan 23, 2004 13:04

Day got off on the wrong foot, but became fun anyway. Discovered that I seem to have lost my bank card, so instead of going to the ATM machine on my way to the T, I lugged my box of coins to the CoinStar machine in the Porter Square Shaw's. (I can't just sidle into my bank for a withdrawal because my bank is NetBank, and does not have any of your primitive hoo-man tellers.) This little box has sat on my fridge for the last eight months, accepting a mouthful of change from me whenever my coat or pants pocket grew too heavy with coin. And today was its day, at last! So it gave forth something over $130, all told, 8.5% of which went to the fine CoinStar folks. It's worth it, I think, and I'm relieved to have this unexpected safety net appear until I can get a new bank card.

(Only surprise: the machine has a rotten UI. I'm not sure how else they could have designed it while keeping the process jam-free, but inserting coins involves dumping them into a tray and then manually pushing them a few at a time into a long, thin slot at one end. It takes a long time (if you have $130 worth of change, anyway) and is actually kind of gross; the fingers of my right hand were black with grime when it was done.)

Bonus: had a few T tokens spat back at me. Relics from the past, worth 25 cents more than I paid for them! Will gladly use them today.

user interfaces, technology, money, the t

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