People are still writing checks?

Last week I was at the checkout line and was behind some old biddy that bust out a checkbook. Legit took her 10 minutes to finish the transaction between her fumbling in her purse for a pen, messing up the amount on the first check, having to start over again and the new cashier not knowing how to take a check on the register.

NGL I nearly lost my shit.

I'm gonna tell a semi related story cause I feel like it

Last time I worked at a supermarket, we had this one regular old lady, probably 90+ years old. She'd come in 2-3 times a week. Nicest lady you could imagine. Complimented every worker on every little thing. Regularly gave us good reviews online, everyone but the cashiers loved her.

Every time she'd get the same things: a bottle of her favorite wine and whatever random magazine she wanted this time. Every time she'd come up and try to pay with a check. And every time, something would be wrong. She wouldn't have a pen, she'd take forever filling out the check, whatever. Turns out she was trying to make it take so long that someone else would pay for her stuff to get her out of the way. Now, at the time I was a stupid teenager, so I wrote it off as a brilliant scheme.

I was working various departments throughout the store, but on this particular day they had me as a bagger. It was one of those rare and horrendously boring days when the employees outnumbered customers 10 to 1. In walks the old lady. The cashier I'm bagging for just grimaces as every non cashier greeted her warmly. The cashier got over his walkie and rang the manager, simply saying "she's here". Bastard refused to tell me what was happening, only telling me to watch.

So, the old lady grabs her things and comes up near the counters. I watched her look around and then just walk away, wine and magazine in hand. A few minutes later, I see her do the same thing. On the third time, the cashier called out to her. She'd been seen and was visibility embarrassed. As she walked over, the cashier hit the alert button on his walkie and set it under the counter.

She gets her items scanned, I bag her stuff, and she gets her total. Something like $25. She brings out her check book and discovers she doesn't have a pen. The cashier smiles and says no problem, he made sure to bring in some especially for her. She takes it, gets close to finally writing, and her hand miraculously starts shaking. She says she can't fill out the check and that she didn't bring any other form of payment.

At this point, the manager had walked out of his office and over to me. He pulled the lady aside and told her that they would no longer accept checks from her and that she'd be expected to have another form of payment from now on. She told us to put back what she had gotten and that we'd hear from her lawyer and blah blah blah. Never saw or heard from her again.

Turns out this lady was loaded. She was the widow and inheriter of some rich dude who used to own like half the town. She was damn near a billionaire. They'd found out when somebody googled the address on her license earlier that week, only to discover it was a colossal mansion worth so much no sites would show an estimate.

I don't know what the hell this lady got out of what she did, but the final straw was when she got a new cashier to pay for her $25 order with their own money. We made barely above 7.25 then, so that was several hours of work taken from them.

Found out in 2020 that she died alone of COVID. Heard rumors her children didn't even talk to her anymore, but I have no real evidence of that

A while back I was talking with someone from a first world country not the US.

I was trying to explain to her that in the US, it’s pretty common to just write some random bullshit on a little piece of paper and hand it to someone, basically a slightly formalized version of the big suitcase full of IOUs from “Dumb and Dumber,” and that they would accept it as a form of payment and then hand it to their bank and it was the bank’s job to sort it all out.

She was scoffing at the entire concept, like what the fuck do you guys use cups and strings for your phone service too? She was just baffled by the idea. Like what if there’s not enough money in the account? Or someone takes someone else’s little pieces of paper, or just prints out their own? And I said yeah that happens sometimes, it’s not a real robust system. But you do have to write your names on the checks, and someone who has no idea what your handwriting looks like checks it, so you know, there’s authentication built in at least.

In this along with many other ways, she was very surprised by the US, like what the fuck I thought you guys had your shit together. I said no, we do not.

There has been an explosion in fraudsters taking checks and altering them to steal money. I bet that has a lot to do with it.

Wait, you guys call cheques, checks? Isn't there already too many other things called checks?