The art of giving, receiving and sometimes forcefully taking.
[Berlin] I have become, over a short period of time, obsessed with dispensers, of all kinds. Ones that slide, snap, drop, carry, shuffle, lash and grab. Each one designed, I think, with a certain character and mood. If a machine is refunding you change they tend to drop it. If you are demanding money it tends to slide it to you (if they are a bank) or count it into a draw if you’re using a convenient in-shop cash dispenser. When you’re purchasing tickets for travel - the machine certainly spit your notes out when they refuse to take them.
But recently I had a new experience, I was in a bank and I had to literally stick my hand quite deep into the machine and pry the notes out of the its clutches. Strange I thought, when withdrawing money from a bank (unless you’re overdrawn) its your money you’re accessing. That got me thinking that surely there could be a other ways of communicating the transfer relationship between bank and customer than this…
One Response to “The art of giving, receiving and sometimes forcefully taking.”
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March 26th, 2007 at 11:18 am
I feel with you, as I recently had a similar experience at a bank in London. It was not the money but the card that came out so slowly, that you were worried it may never come out at all. Furthermore, it then only extended out about 2mm, so that I had to use my keys to get it out! There is certainly an issue about security, but once money is dispensed or cards are returned, one should think that even if there was a thug in front of the machine, there now was nothing more one could do and the machines would finally give in and then out. I also wonder what happens if you leave your hands in one of those machines that have a slider, which opens and closes in front of the cash dispensing mechanism. Will it cut off your hand to be stored as evidence in court just in case you are one of those 1 in a thousand customers with criminal intent? Sometimes it certainly feels that way.