ATM Rage

Dear Inexperienced ATM User,

I want to be a better person, but I’m afraid I do not suffer your ignorance gracefully. It seems to me that regardless of which ATM I use, what time I use it, or even which country I am using it in, you will always be one or two queue members ahead of me, head filled with what I can only imagine are pixies and unicorns.

An Automatic Teller Machine, or ATM (or ATM Machine as I’m sure you refer to it) is remarkably simple to use. They have a, for lack of a better word, universal design. They involve a simple tube or LCD monitor with words and pictures combined with three slots and a number pad. The only information you need to use is what to put in the slots (I am being unintentionally suggestive here, and I would apologise sincerely, but I doubt you will understand the double entendre, Inexperienced ATM User, so I will not) and take out of them, the account you wish to withdraw from, the amount you wish to withdraw and your Personal Identification Number.

I can almost hear you, as you read this, Inexperienced ATM User, sneering at me and telling me, in your most educated voice, ‘a-DUH!’ however, I would like to stop you, if I may, to advise that you do not, in fact, seem to grasp these simple notions. First of all, you are rarely prepared, card in hand, when you get to the ATM. You fumble in your wallet, purse or man-bag until you finally locate it, then you place it in the card slot. The card slot will likely glow with indication that you place the card, per the picture, face up and with the numbers linear to yourself. Nine times out of ten, Inexperienced ATM User, you will fail to do this correctly the first time.

Then you are required to interact with the screen and number pad. You are required to input your PIN, something I’m sure you do many times a week as you use the card for shopping and other, non-ATM related purchases. But you cannot. You must consider the numbers, laid out as they are on any number pad, on any calculator, computer, telephone or ATM the world over, for some moments before finally keying it in. And then, and this is what frustrates me the most, then you need to select a transaction and account. You seem to have no idea of why you queued up for the ATM in the first place, nor what account you hold and this astounds me. Unless you are, and I doubt this, incredibly wealthy or differently abled (and sadly, you rarely are, and in such occasions, are forgiven) there is no reason this would not be as if second nature to you, as if breathing to you, as if, in fact, your life depended upon it. Because frankly, considering the intensity of my mood as I stand, slowly rotting to death with age behind you, your life does depend upon it.

Finally, after at least five minutes of utter failure on your part, you await your receipt, only to realise you opted out of it not seconds earlier. You then laugh sheepishly, when you should be begging for mercy and forgiveness, fumble your money into your wallet, purse or man-bag without moving away from the ATM and then amble out of our lives.

Over time, I estimate that you have cost me almost an hour, possibly two hours of my life, which may not sound high to you, but those are two hours of the most excruciating frustration to ever be known by a human being, and thus are a high price to pay for your ignorance. I hope this gauntlet better equips you to interact with basic machinery, and in the case that it does not, I hope it is the tool to your demise.

Adrik