Okay, so today I head over to Staples, finally decided on a replacement for my lousy HP laser printer. Over the past couple years, it’s been in the shop numerous times, each time they say it just needed a good cleaning, only to bring it back to the home office and have it rip paper and jam as it was feeding (Hmmm, I never thought, it MIGHT be hungry!!!). Anyway, the duplexer (2-sided printing) has never worked right, and all in all it has been quite a crappy purchase. So, after doing bunches of research, reading internet reviews until my eyes glazed over, and comparing one to another, I decided to get an inkjet. Well, I head to the local Staples, had the kid get one down from the top shelf, gather together plenty of extra cartridges, and various other things I needed for the office. The total came to $678.43. I pulled out one of my company checks, filled it out correctly (Staples has accepted them before), and handed it to the clerk. He runs it through their magic check approval machine, and POOF! DENIED!!! What?, says I inside. I have significantly more than that in the account. The clerk calls the approval company, is shuttled through various automated extensions or whatever, and finally gets a live person. Whoever that was (perhaps in Bangalore or somewhere like that?) confirmed they couldn’t take the check. Well, sorry to say, since it was for business, I don’t have a business credit card, nor a debit card, so the poor kid had to haul everything back. I sure wasn’t going to pull out my personal credit card for the purchase.

Whatever happened to “the good old days” when a clerk would just call the bank the check was from, give them the account number and the amount, and get approval? You remember way back when, don’t you? The clerk would pull a huge stamp from under the register, flip your check over, stamp it, and with the phone cradled against the shoulder, fill out some cryptic numbers and such while talking to the bank.

Technology is great most of the time, but I see it taking a bit away from us at the same time.

It makes me want to find some stationary and just write someone a letter. Any takers?

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