I decided, when we came to Topeka, that I would get a debit card, but wouldn’t use it any great extent. Rather, I would pay cash for much of what I would buy. And for awhile, that worked out according to plan. The debit card stayed in my wallet, and the cash left it.
But something has happened over the course of the last several months. Increasingly, cash is harder to spend than debit cards. My debit card is getting a real workout these days. “The devil,” you say. Yes, it is impossible to buy gasoline in Topeka with cash without pre-paying. That means that you have to find an empty pump, go to the cashier and give him/her/it a couple of twenties, and go back out and pump your gas. Then you traipse back into the cashier and settle up with him/her/it. After that, you go back out to your car and try to squeeze out of the lot, because 22 other cars are waiting for a slot at the pumps.
Other businesses are just as untrusting as the gas stations. They scrutinize each twenty dollar bill, especially the new ones. It’s almost impossible to pass a fifty or a C-note nowadays. They mark something on them that is supposed to tell them if the bill is counterfeit or not. You more often than not receive back ratty and torn ones and fives in change. Counting coins is a new experience for some checkers. Usually, you receive your change in a lump…not counted out, not checked for accuracy.
So, the debit card is winning out, at least here in Topeka. It’s fast, convenient, and always has the correct change. It’s almost universally accepted, takes up little space, and signifies that one is at least somewhat modern in thought and action.
I don’t like debit cards. They enable the tracking of my purchasing habits, provide too much of a paper trail, and are just one more thing for which I have to remember a PIN. They encourage non-relational transactions, destroy what little is left of mutual trust between business and consumer, and continue to preside over the degrading of humans into PIN-carriers.
Welcome to post-modernism.