When is a check not a check--or this is the 21st century

Many years ago, someone told Madeleine L'Engle that the signature on her check didn't really matter, that tellers looked only at accounts and amounts. Flabbergasted, Madeleine tested it out. She wrote a check and signed with a name from literature. No questions asked. She felt like a nonperson, someone who wasn't even a name on a check. In the ensuing days and weeks, she had a grand time with all her favorite characters--one day she might be Elizabeth Bennett, or Alice in Wonderland, or Charlotte Bronte, or Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She eventually went back to being her honest self--Madeleine L'Engle.

In the meantime, some banks got smart and started asking for IDs or comparing the signatures with electronic file copies of signatures.

Today I discovered what I consider to be a 21st century equivalent.

I admit I am a dinosaur; I still write checks for groceries, clothing, prescriptions, etc. Two young men in the family have made it clear that they resent standing behind someone in line who is writing a check. Some day they will be dinosaurs of some sort, and this current generation will die out. Until then, be patient guys.

I was at the grocery store this afternoon, and I had a bill for $37.15, so I wrote a check for $67.15. I signed the sworn statement that I had money to cover the check and if not I would pay some outrageous penalty. The clerk handed me my receipt and the postage stamps I had bought. When I asked about my $30 change, she looked at the "check" receipt and the grocery receipt. Both read $37.15, but I was holding a canceled check in my hand that was clearly written and signed for the amount of $67.15.

She told me nothing could be done about it; the amount on the "check" receipt had been debited from my account. I could go buy something else and write another check  with the $30 extra. She also said that her keyboard was sticky [right, I have a bridge to sell you]. When I went to the office desk for help, a pleasant young man said the same thing, but he was willing to take a check for $30, without my buying anything.

I stood there staring at my check and the various receipts in total disbelief. Not only was my check a non-check, but I had just discovered how easy it would be to steal from my account.

Friends regularly send me emails that are looking back lovingly on another, better time, or they are casting aspersions at the current state of the world. I usually don't read them; nostalgia isn't very helpful in the present. It can be fun and memorable, but we are living here and now.

However, experiences like this make me look back and wonder whether the new electronic age is all that it is cracked up to be.

Signed,
 A Friendly Dinosaur