Paranoid Customers

People are SO overly and unnecessarily paranoid during the checking out process. This customer last night told me he wanted to pay with his debit card the exact amount. I tapped the buttons and watched as he wrapped both his arms around the pin pad machine and bent his head over to enter in his pin number as quickly as possible. Ooookayyyy. I tried to keep my face straight. The other extreme was one time this older couple came through my line and he decided to pay with debit exact. His wife had to show him how to slide the card and then he couldn't remember the pin number. ""I wrote it down somewhere..." He took out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. On the paper was written "Pin #" followed by the numbers. He waved it around and flattened it out on the counter where anyone could have seen it. "6, 8..." he said outloud as he hit the numbers on the keypad. "Don't say it outloud!" his wife said. I caught her eye and we laughed. The paranoid debit card user reminded me of all the other ridiculous people. Quite a few people go to slide their card and I have to ask, "Is that debit or credit?" They answer, "Credit," and slide again as if I had asked the question out of mere curiousity. Uh, no. "I have to slide credit here," I say. Did you really not notice that nothing is happening on the pin pad? They look at me like I'm crazy to even suggest the idea that they hand me their card. "I'll do debit instead," they say. Because clearly I'm going to take the card and copy everything down so I can steal your identity. I'm definitely not 12 inches away from you, right in front of your face in a public place with tons of people watching me. So stupid. And the old people who take half an hour to write a check instead of sliding a card because for some reason they think all their money is going to be stolen. Some old woman will wait until the very end of the order and then look around in her huge pocket book for EVER to find her checkbook. She opens it slowly and fills out the check, asking me for the amount when it's right on the screen in front of her. She carefully rips out the check and writes down the number and amount before handing it to me. "Do you have aMarket Basket card..........." I ask. "Oh, yes!" Now, she has to find the card and she's so old it takes her about 30 seconds to get it out of the slot in her wallet and hand it to me. "Can you confirm here please........" I point to the pin pad. She squints at the screen and says, "Is that the green button?" "Just hit the button next to where it says 'confirm'." "Where is that?" UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. JUST USE A DEBIT CARD. After I finally get to put the check through the printer and show her the amount, I hand her the receipt along with a good chunk of my sanity.