It is now quite impossible to make a “quick run to the ATM.”

What one should need to do at an ATM is get cash, check one’s balance, and that’s it. Meanwhile, the banks have taken the opportunity to allow its members to do anything up to and including opening new accounts, applying for mortgages, and making stock trades on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Japanese. It’s certainly true that giving customers the chance to handle these tasks with a cold, unthinking machine is going to save money on warm bodies, but at what cost to the rest of us?

And what kind of backwards crapass fly by night employer doesn’t do direct deposit?

I suffered a wait on a few such individuals shortly ago. After waiting long enough to get two new car loans (and approval for them), the person in front of me had the chance to pull up. Luckily for me, she merely needed cash, so I didn’t have long to wait. As I got my own cash with blinding speed and went to pull forward, I had to block the thingy… the lady in front had paused to meticulously count the bills she’d received. Apparently it took a few tries. And thanks to those little lanes the bank had constructed there, I couldn’t move out around her.

And so, an item intended to make banking easier and more expedient now traps us in line and makes us wait, impatiently. It’s deviously evil, isn’t it?