Upside down and back to front would be easier
Was it the fax machine makers or the photocopier makers? Doesn’t matter much now because it’s too far down the track to do anything about it and we just have to live with it. Here’s the thing - it seems that roughly half the fax machines and photocopiers out there need you to put the sheet to be copied face up and the other half of machines - face down. I should be over this by now - but, what’s exercising me about this is EFTPOS machines - when they first arrived, the shop assistant swiped the card for you but now increasingly the customer swipes.
Seems that roughly half want the magnetic strip on the right and half on the left. How many times a day do shop staff have to tell customers it’s the other way round? Some machines have a little symbol on them and I now look for that. In another shop, they had put their own little paper notice “Stripe this side” down the side of the machine.
And then there are my favourites, ATM machines. I look at the symbol to show you which way round to put the card in but their example never matches my card so I have to do a little brain gymnastics to imagine how my card fits that image - and I don’t always get it right. Why don’t ATM machines require you to put the card in upside down? The back of all cards is the same - just show me the strip on right or left and in it goes, right every time. So when the ATM manufacturers bring out their new “upside down” models - can they please all agree to have the strip on the same side?
My other not so favourite EFTPOS machines are the ones in the PostShops. You have to slide the card down into the machine and pull it out again. Same problem, mental gymnastics to figure out the right way round (and I’m a Kiwibank customer!) - I can almost sense the staff tensing up - “OK another EFTPOS dummy approaching” - some just lean over and pull the card out and put it in the right way themselves - it’s efficient but the word “dumbarse” gets silently communicated. This little scenario is playing out over and over again everyday at a PostShop near you.
If those machines were designed to take in the card back to front - the symbol would be clear - no mental gymnastics for me or you.
