Thursday, February 18, 2010

I pick up your discarded ATM receipts.


OK.
I admit it. I pick up discarded ATM receipts. Kinda creepy, I know, but I can't stop.

It started as an attempt to keep down the random blowing trash.  As trash goes, these little slips of white paper are relatively clean and there always is a trash can nearby... But then I started actually looking at them.

Big mistake.

Here is what I have learned.

1) Nobody discards an ATM receipt if they have more than $500.00 in their account. Nobody.  I have never found one with more than $500.  Either folks who have cash keep their receipts or NO ONE that uses an ATM has more than $500 in their bank account.  I seriously doubt the latter.

2) People that only have a little money, waste it.

Case in point,  this receipt:

This person had $334.73 in their account.  They withdrew $200.  They paid $3 to BB&T to get the cash.  They probably also paid a fee to their own bank.

So they wasted nearly 1% of their wealth to withdraw $200.  Probably more.

There may be good reason for this.  I certainly don't know their situation from just a discard ATM receipt.
  • Maybe their bank doesn't have a local ATM.  
  • Maybe they really needed to get $200 at 4:55pm. 
  • Maybe they have a larger bank account and don't care about wasting a measly $3.
  • Or maybe, just maybe, they aren't paying attention to how much money they are wasting...
Which might help explain why they only had 334.73 in their account..

Does anybody else pick these up?

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

This dude needs better friends

 So you are sitting at work and an email comes in from a buddy. Images attached. What are they? Latest Data Center pictures? New iPad schematics?

Let's just take a look.

Fast forward to 1:00. Watch the screen of the guy in the background, middle left...

D'oh!