Having been born toward the beginning of the Baby Boom, 1950, and having to go from a post WWII Cold War era, through the Atomic, Space, AIDS, and computer Ages, I have had to do quite a bit of adaptation to change, and have managed it all very well, thank you.
It usually took a little trial and error, but I pretty much mastered, to a useful degree, many modern electronic devices that did not become common until my late adulthood.
After having found a way to use my classroom computer, projector, and erasable white-board to look up information to instantly show my class if a question was asked for which I did not have a ready answer by utilizing the internet, I was reprimanded and directed under penalty of potential dismissal for insubordination if I continued the practice. I did. I kept getting written up. My students learned things in a new way, and now everyone does it because it is so useful.
When I bought my first video cassette player, I was able to stop it from blinking “12:00” in only two tries.
When they were introduced, they did not always exist, I loved the convenience of debit cards. Just insert, poke some numbers, retrieve the card, smile at the cashier with a friendly thank you, and off you go, or take your cash from the ATM and weakly apologize to the next in line for taking too long when your interaction with the machine was of standard length. It was simple, fast, and convenient.
As I get older, the last thing I want to appear is a bumbling elder who seems lucky to make it through a day. This is not helped by the ever-changing and more complicated Point of Sale debit card machine.
It seems each store, and even over time the same ones, keep changing the POS machines making them more involved and complicated as we are now asked if we want a membership or want to make a contribution. We are asked to add the last digits of our phone number, if we would like cash back, and any number of questions that prolong the process. Purchasing the simplest thing now has a form of Exit Exam, making people look bumbling as they attempt to retrieve their card before the final exam question and appear to be unfamiliar with simple debit card machines with the clerk giving directions like feeble mindedness is the problem not the additional required steps.
It makes seniors look stupid when it is merely a matter of forgetting which POS machine that particular store uses as it will definitely be different from the last store or that same store’s yesterday.
We have express lines for other things, why not a POS machine for people who want to make a simple purchase without the interview.
In, out.
That simple.
The next time some high school kid gives me the side eye with a little sucking in of air because my body language projects that, as far as I am concerned, I am done only to have to be told I need to finish up the remaining questions, I am handing them a list of things this bumbling old man needs but is incapable of finding on his own in cursive.
In Europe the proprietary power cords that come with many devices, having left Europeans having multiple cords, one for each device, the EU mandated that all charger cords have the same type of plug that goes into devices, a universal male, so an android and an I-pad can be charged without a hunt for the proper cord.
We need universal POS devices with an option to go to another register of if we just do not have time for the exit exam.
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