ATM Failure? Human Stupidity.

It isn't what you think. No, it's not the ATM's failure, and No, it's not the Bank Personnel's stupidity.

Well, I banked in my pay-cheque two days ago and it cleared this morning. Thank God for that! I arrived at LRT station with an expired monthly travel card! I totally forgot that today was the first day of December and my November Travel Card has expired! luckily I had enough cash with me to buy the freak of a RM90 card. Close call #1.

Close call #2: This is embarassing. Well, I figured since I banked-in the cheque two days ago, it would've been cleared by this morning. If not, I would have to either hump the ATM machine and hope that something comes out in due time, or just bang my head against it so that people withdrawing money beside me would feel compassionate towards my plight. Well, I proceeded into taking around 90% of my entire pay out of the machine because I had bills to attend to. So I was a happy banker that I need not wait until the bank opened its ever hungry jaws of a door to do my banking. The ATM would do just fine.

So, out of security, (Chief, I am VERY High-C) I proceeded to count the amount of cash in my hand, just in case. And to my horror, I found that I had apparently been short-changed by the machine by a good RM200.00!!! So I segregated the cash into sections and proceeded to re-count the prescious little cash that I have in my hand. And the result came out the same! Lacking RM200!!!

Since it was about 9.25, I proceeded to wait until the bank opens and was ardent in being the first complainer of the day! I had to venture and manouver two information counters and almost got thrown like a rubber ball from one to the other, like any information counter/service centre in Malaysia, before I got the relevant papers to fill up.

So, I filled-up the complaint papers, and got myself to the designated counter that handled complaints. The bank officer apparently just sat down and had large sheets of paper on his desk. He has a long day ahead of him. Well, as he saw me trying to make eye contact with him, he proceeded to shoo away a sand fly from his stack of info on his desk with a rubber band. We shared a slight 'complimentary' laugh as I applauded his stunt.

Wel, he was nice enough to attend to my problem immediately, and while he was doing the checking on my case on his compurter screen, I took out the stack of money from my pockets and attempted a re-re-count just to make sure. And sure enough, I saw the error when I checked properly. See, when I counted the money at the ATM's I had them folded and counted it like a true professional, holding the folded stack in my hands and using thumbs to mark and turn the leafs. My father was a Cashier for a good 25 years before the 1997 Depression. So, I learned the tricks of the trade. By folding the stack into half, you count until you hit the middle of the stack. How do you know when you have reached the middle of the stack? When you see the sides change and you find His Majesty's face looking at you, somehow...

And sure enough, I came to realise that the ATM Machine was right, and I was wrong. You see, the majority of the money was facing one side and the RM200 was facing the other side. (Imagine one side has the face of His Majesty, and the other side was the depiction of some architectural marvel of Malaysia. So the RM200 had His Majesty's face 'looking' the other way. So when I reached the face, I stopped, thinking I had hit the middle of the stack.

Stupid Humans...