things you once thought socially acceptable which now horrify you to remember

i still see merchants outside the US being surprised when they run my card and I don't have to type in a pin.

Can you still pay for a worrying amount of things by just swiping the card?

xp well that's answered!

Is there a reason for that, incidentally? Credit card companies wanting payments to be as casual as possible? (Tbf having to sign is more of a hassle than typing in a PIN.)

worrying amount of things = everything.

The whole splitting the check thing seems like such a pain in the ass to me

best believe i had to read this one twice, friends and neighbours

second vote here for ogmors suggestion of "laying on floor until u die" if we are going to go to the lowest common denominator of ensuring never to upset anyone suggest away from a thoroughfare possible under a stairs or something

I heard that when signing was introduced, it came with a taboo against actually checking the signature because that seemed more disrespectful than 'sorry computer says no, do you have another card?' - but I can imagine that's not universal, and I shouldn't base my view on class and money in the US on one article in the New Yorker.

is there another thread for stuff that's considered socially acceptable now that will be unbelievable in 20+ years?

oh yeah giving info to tech 100%, that probably won't take 20 years though

― flappy bird, Thursday, 18 July 2019 17:16 (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Counterpoint: freaking out about giving data to tech.

a lot of it is weird legacy crap in the US and perceived resistance to change

as in, people have always just put their card on a little tray, it comes back with a receipt, you sign it. restaurants are loathe to update their equipment -- which is now getting solved by being required to support chip cards, although that requirement isn't universal -- and the perception was that consumers would dislike a required change

a bunch of places I've been to switched straight from "take your card away to swipe it" model to "we bring a little card reader tablet to the table" which is fine

I'm used to contactless now, which seems safe enough insofar as you still need to type in your PIN above a certain sum.

One of the most upsetting moments of my life was once when I was unemployed, I'd spent the entire day home alone listening to old Miles Davis interviews and then went to a job interview later that afternoon where, to my utter mortified horror, like an out-of-body experience, I heard myself refer to my coworkers at my old job as "those cats". 15 years later my stomach still does cartwheels remembering it. Amazingly, I did not get the job.

It amuses me now how paranoid as hell I was about contactless at first and was thinking what would stop tech savvy contactless pick pockets scanning you as they walk past them. ha, don't give it a 2nd thought these days.

Heh, same here. I'm at that point where there are so many reasons to be paranoid about that kind of stuff that I've simply stopped paying it any mind.

chip and pin rolled out weirdly and incorrectly in the US for reasons I cannot fathom

traveling in the EU with an american card is a pain in the ass.

it can be the other way round too tbh. my card will get randomly declined in the USA. some places also ask you "debit or credit", the correct answer to that question is "credit" (it is a debit card!) and forget about using your PIN anywhere, it won't work

tbh I don't travel that much and on the rare occasions I have been somewhere other than the USA it's been in the EU, so maybe that's why I don't have problems anywhere else.

Actually, wait, what is the magic code for getting money from an American ATM with a UK debit card?

Is it just get some money before you go? I have forgotten, which is odd considering the obvious panic of "if this machine eats my card then I'll die here"

One of the most upsetting moments of my life was once when I was unemployed, I'd spent the entire day home alone listening to old Miles Davis interviews and then went to a job interview later that afternoon where, to my utter mortified horror, like an out-of-body experience, I heard myself refer to my coworkers at my old job as "those cats". 15 years later my stomach still does cartwheels remembering it. Amazingly, I did not get the job.

― “Hakuna Matata,” a nihilist philosophy (One Eye Open), Monday, July 22, 2019 10:21 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is amazing. At least you didn't refer to a former coworker as "a non-playing motherfucker with only one or two sorry-ass albums out."

it's been a while so I can't remember exactly which ones, but some chains of banks' ATMs will work with UK debit cards, you just have to keep trying until you find one. not had a problem with card getting eaten, it just gets declined

xp

mind you that is the same in the EU. you can increase your odds by making sure your type of card is accepted, obviously. mine is a Visa, so if it doesn't say Visa it's not going to work, but half the time even if it does say Visa on the machine it still won't work

in what crazy world does a card not just work be it at table or cashier or ATM

tbh the days of ilx being described as UK or US are dead youse are a pair of dead or dying empires and imo should be looking agape at the future yr European posting colleagues already inhabit

Some of us are Canucks too.

a bunch of places I've been to switched straight from "take your card away to swipe it" model to "we bring a little card reader tablet to the table" which is fine

There's a place here that brings out their lil "pay the bill" tablet WHILE I'M STILL EATING THEIR MESSY FOOD. It's hella gauche.

youse are a pair of dead or dying empires

the US empire is dying, yes, but empires tend to fade out slowly. you can easily see when they have passed their zenith, but so long as their ruling class works hard to keep its grip, their accumulated wealth and power ebbs only after many generations.

otoh, the brit empire blew up amazingly fast, but mainly because during the two world wars they burned through two successive generations of their aristocracy like feeding a bonfire and the paltry survivors rather lost their will and threw in with the yanks as a junior partner.

yanks Ulster-Scots

with plenty of teutonic-scando mixed in, so as to apportion the blame fairly

during the two world wars they burned through two successive generations of their aristocracy like feeding a bonfire

lol now do france losing its empire

Wicker Lad

xp - which one?

chip and pin rolled out weirdly and incorrectly in the US for reasons I cannot fathom

Aggressive lobbying from finance and retail that decided that the (massive) cost of of credit card fraud was less hassle that replacing credit card readers with chip and pin. In Europe, the EU just mandated it was going to happen and no one complained apart from the French who had had chip and pin for years but with an incompatible system.

On the standing up when people enter the room, or join you at a table. I always do it, for everyone. Partly because it was drilled into me at school and partly because it’s impossible to greet people properly when sitting down. Whether it is a handshake, a hug or a kiss a doesn’t work as well sitting down.

> apart from the French who had had chip and pin for years

i worked for Bull HN and we had chip and pin ID cards in the mid 90s (although nothing actually used the chips in them, there were no readers anywhere)

(Bull was French-owned)

I think a large chunk of the work to get chip-and-pin rolled out in Ireland was managed by an ex-ILXor!

^^ Things you were shockingly old when you learned o_O

Card declined you poxy fule

definitely had some financial mishap in american bars by giving my credit card, and starting a tab, drinking till steaming as fuck, signing the bastarding receipt with a 20% gratuity, waking up the next day unsure of just how much i spent

can happen with any form of payment

shur manys the day after a mart day id to send in another fifth of a pig back into town to cover the tip

tell a yank that nowadays and theyd tell ya shouldve been a quarter pig ffs

Going back to the "following guest" weirdness, in Aus Ive noticed a lot of places they now bleat "next waiting!" which also makes not a lot of sense.

xp they’re lucky you sent more than the squeal

Brought up the “following guest” thing with somebody today and he told me that at DSW the cashiers are required to say “ next shoelover!”

VULTURE: Was it hard to adjust to civilian life?

LETTERMAN: It’s still hard. I have trouble operating the phone. That’s the God’s truth. I needed a pair of shoelaces. And I thought, Hell, where do you get shoelaces? And my friend said, there’s a place over off I-84, it’s the Designer Shoe Warehouse. So I go over there, and it’s a building the size of the Pentagon. It’s enormous. If you took somebody from — I don’t know, pick a country where they don’t have Designer Shoe Warehouses — blindfolded them and turned them loose in this place, they would just think, You people are insane. Who needs this many shoes? It’s sinful. It’s one of these places where there’s no employees and every now and then there’s just a scrum of shoe boxes. I’m not finding the damn shoelaces, and finally I think, Maybe it’s one of those items they’ve got at the counter. I go up there and I’m nosing around the counter and, by God, there’s shoelaces. This is after about an hour. So now I’m waiting in line and the woman checking people out says in a big loud voice, “May I help our next shoe lover, please?” I just started to tremble. Nobody else seems to have a problem with going to a store! You don’t want to have painted yourself into some elite position where it’s “Bob, go out and get me some shoelaces.” It makes you feel stupid. Here’s where I’m comfortable: There’s a bait-and-tackle store near my house. They’ve got guys in there, and you can buy live bait, you can buy artificial bait, they’ll put new line on your reel. You can talk to them about rods. They’ll tell you where to go for a largemouth bass. That’s exactly where I want to be.

https://www.vulture.com/2017/03/david-letterman-in-conversation.html

ronswanson.jpg

Paying a guy to paddle my canoe. Like it was the most natural thing in the world.

david otm

I stop in DSW pretty regularly. It's definitely insane. But I've never had anyone call me a "shoe lover".

thought we were beyond that as a society

Don't kinkshame

We were in the Whole Foods off Columbus Circle yesterday and I was listening out for "Following Guest" but didn't hear it - but I also didn't understand a single thing about what the queuing system was, there seemed to be three lanes feeding into the same set of checkout machines, and when we haltingly took one we overheard something that we're paranoid was people complaining about us skipping the line in some way.

(Things you fear are socially acceptable but still horrify you)

Nothing about waiting in line at WF is socially acceptable, everyone is horrified

xp do they have self-checkouts or were they regular staffed ones? this sounds odd and like I might screw it up. normal in my area is each staffed checkout has a line, self checkouts are relatively new but typically have one line for the whole area and first in line takes whichever frees up next

I’ve never heard anyone call for a customer at a grocery checkout unless it’s a register that just opened and no one’s noticed

These are staffed express checkouts, multiple lines, with screens telling each group which checkout stall to go to. They just got them here too.