The theatricality of shop assistants

Does anyone here remember a time, I think it was back in the middle ages, shortly after the wheel had been developed but before the credit crunch, when you went to a shop to pay for things using a card and all you had to prove it was your card was sign your name?

Does anyone here remember that?

[Anyone here under 25 is going [whisper] I think that man up there needs professional help. He's talking stupid talk]

Now of course, no one signs for anything any more.

It's all chip 'n pin. Chip 'n pin. Chip n'pin.

I don't have a problem with Chip n' pin, but around the same time they brought chip 'n pin in, did they re-staff every shop in the country with bad amateur dramatic actors.

Because every time I go to pay for something and it's the moment to put my pin into the machine the assistant goes

[physical acting: the most hammy look away you can possible imagine].

Which if you think about it, is really quite strange.

Is the assumption that I think they look like a criminal?

Are these people who since Chip 'n Pin find the temptation of card fraud overwhelming, maybe it's got nothing to do with me, maybe it's just their way of protecting themselves from committing fraud.

Of course, I find the idea of anything that happens to me not being about me almost impossible to imagine.

Actually, not almost impossible.
Just impossible.

And it's not just fraud they would be committing.

First they'd have to commit robbery possibly, possibly with aggravated assault.

Because let's not forget, presuming they do see my pin number, they still have to get the card off me. That part of buying things hasn't changed. You still you get your card back. They do actually need your card to buy things.

Something else I've noticed about this theatrical gesture is that actually it's pretty impractical. Because all this turning away and not looking means that you don't actually know when the transaction has happened.

So unless shop assistants do that thing that children do when they want to watch a scary programme on TV but when they do so feel safer watching it from behind the sofa, and then they do this.

[physical - hand over one eye, then just ease the fingers apart].

Of course, as a customer, if you need to spice up your day at all. And I find there's very few days in my life when that's not a requirement, you have the option of not putting in your pin number at all.

This then means when the shop assistant does the child watching TV thing, you can be looking directly at them and meet their gaze. And with that gaze throw in some raised eyebrows, I can't do it myself, but if you know how to do the one eyebrow thing, so much the better.

The unspoken assumption that passed between you both is that they're trying to steal your card.

They're about to commit fraud, possibly with aggravated assault.

Then, the only option available to them is an even more theatrical gesture.
And you've got to wonder at this point whether as they're turning away and shielding themselves from the temptation of stealing your card whether they're thinking

(thespian voice) "I wish I'd started smaller with the first gesture, then I would have had somewhere to go, that last one really was too much, too over the top".

Of course, if you're having a particularly boring day, or just feel like needlessly playing some kind of cat and mouse game with another human for your own childless gratification, you don't have to stop there.

At some point they're going to snap again and do the fingers thing.

And then you do the eyebrows thing again. But this time you can combine it with the slow nod. The nod that says,

"I'm onto you buddy. I'm watching you. I'm watching you, watching me.
But this is one Chip 'N Pin you're not getting.
This Chip 'N Pin is mine, so you best look away one last time while I key it in, and this time none of that peeking through fingers crap.

When it's time for you to look, I'll tell you to look".

Has that ever happened to anyone here. Does anyone get that?

** SIDE THING** Of course now when you do go on holiday and you're asked to sign for something it's like being an Aristocrat in the 1920's. A time when a man's signature was more than enough proof of his means to pay.

Oh how I miss those days I was never a part of.