I like to think I’ve mastered the credit card/reading machine interaction. At the grocery store the payment gizmo tells me when to remove my credit card. Likewise, with the ATM. While every machine’s different, most make the instructions clear—leave it in for fifteen seconds to be read, or dip it with a quick in-and-out motion. In department stores there are many questions to be answered before I can grab my card and my purchase and move on—paper receipt? Zip code? Email address? Donate?
I run into trouble at the carwash. Driving up to the payment stand, I lower my window. Unable to reach, I lift myself a bit and lean out, an awkward position to maintain, but it happens every time I do any sort of drive thru.
The how-to illustration next to the slot shows the card with the strip at the top and facing left. I do what the picture tells me, but the response is “Unable to read card.” I try again. No joy. The card worked fine ten minutes ago at the dry cleaners. I try three more times before turning my attention to the written instructions. It turns out that the picture and the words don’t say the same thing. The strip is supposed to be facing right.
I turn the card and try again, but still the recording says, “Unable to read card.” The programmed woman’s voice is judging me. She’s impatient because I’m forcing her to repeat herself. And she’s condescending because I’m so inept. The card not working when it was facing the wrong way made sense. But it should work now. I’m obviously missing something.
In the neighboring lane, other cars zip on through; and I don’t like that other people know how to get this payment stand to cooperate and I don’t. Three idling cars hover in my rearview mirror. One of them issues an emphatic HONK! Exasperated and losing all confidence in myself, I push the “help” button. The recorded message becomes sympathetic, assuring me that someone will be out shortly to help.
Two minutes later a teenage guy with hair sprouting from beneath a cap lumbers out. He’s very polite, offering a pleasant greeting and asking what the problem is.
“It’s not accepting my card,” I tell him.
The screen is divided into three sections, the top advertising discounts, the middle inviting me to buy a membership—and this gives me pause. A membership to a carwash is something that, until this moment, I was unaware existed. It seems to come with a fob that has a barcode for fast entry, which would surely be of use to me right now; but I’m so flustered by the difficulty I’m having in simply achieving this one little thing that the thought of collaborating in a club-joining venture with this limited automaton is daunting.
The lower third of the screen shows only the brand name of the car wash. My helper pokes this section and it comes to life, showing a menu of the types and prices.
How was I supposed to know to push there first? There’s no indication that it’s a place that’ll react—no Select Here, or Press Here.
“What kind of wash d’ya want?” he asks.
“Whitewater.”
He pokes my selection and the screen changes again, telling me to insert my card. He holds out his hand for my card, pushes it in, pulls it out, and hands it back.
So, two things I did wrong. I was supposed to select first, which I didn’t know to do because it was less than obvious; and I was supposed to dip, not insert and wait—information which was also held back.
“The instructions on this thing aren’t clear,” I complain.
“They’re all different,” he tells me. “Have a great day.”
Confounded, mourning my incompetence, he shakes his head sadly as he walks away.
The arm lifts and I go through.
As the outside of my car is getting the dirt blasted from it by powerful jets of soapy water, and gigantic spongy tentacles swish heavily on the windows, it occurs to me that this carwash is part of a chain. And that, as such, the same lack of precise instructions is mounted on the payment kiosks of every one of the chain’s carwashes in every town in Texas.
Across the state people with literal minds are reaching from their windows and shoving credit cards into slots facing the wrong direction. Stymied by a lack of directives, they’re holding up carwash lines. And they’re feeling stupid. Not just feeling stupid, but being made to feel stupid. Is this a deliberate scheme meant to sow self-doubt? Is this a black-hearted machination geared toward making, not just me, but all of us, feel lesser, hesitant, off balance? I think so, Cricket, I think so.
My car, clean; but was it worth the price?
