Bag lady blues
One of the greatest disadvantages of being women must surely be that we need to carry our lives in our handbags. For a start, just having a handbag is a disability. Men have pockets. We have a purse inside the bag, stuffed with old till slips, the odd banknote, coins for the car guards. Men have folded notes in a pocket. We have two or three lipsticks, a bottle of liquid handwash (after touching those supermarket trolleys, an essential). Men generally don’t do the supermarket shopping.
But the main point of this little whinge is that we tend to have multiple bags – sort of one for each outfit, or the casual bag and the designer bag. You know what I mean. And you probably know where this is leading…
I got to the till in the supermarket yesterday and just knew, as I put my hand into my bag to hand over the card, that I had forgotten to transfer the cardholder from my other bag. I had the coin purse with random notes stuffed in, but nothing substantial, and the loyalty card from my local coffee shop was not going to cut it. So I had to confess my stupidity to the cashier and leave the goods in the trolley, while going back home to collect the necessary.
On the way past the ATMs a brainwave struck. Cardless services! I had seen this on the screen many times and now was the perfect opportunity to try it out. I must have left my common sense at home as well, as it took quite a while to figure it all out, and a few trips into the bank to discuss my problems with the extremely patient bank official. In the end, it turned out that I had to first send myself money from my bank account to my phone (luckily had my tablet and phone with me) and then I could withdraw cash with the temporary PIN sent to my phone. The tablet/phone story is too long and complicated to bother with here, but suffice to say that eventually I had it all worked out and was clutching the cash in my sticky little paws.
Once again, the wonders of modern technology – but only once an awful lot of learning has been done! At least it saved me a long journey in the car.