Old

Parking Garage Ticket Machine

They changed the payment system in the parking garage we use in downtown Portland. Used to be the machine would hand you a thin little card with magic numbers on it when you drove in and when you were ready to leave you would insert this little card into another machine and which would demand money before it would let you go.

Now instead of a thin little card, you get a piece of paper much like a credit card receipt. When we are leaving, I am standing in line with all the other sheep, waiting for my turn at the altar of mammon. The people at the front are taking a really long time to complete their offering, must have been at least a minute. Wretched philistines. They finally move off and now the line has accelerated from a dead stop to crawling along, so I think I should probably get my ducks in a row. I pull out my wallet and start looking for the thin card that the entrance machine usually gives me, but I can't find it. All I find is a whole sheaf of credit card receipts. Bah, double bah and humbug. I am taking so long, I let the next person go in front of me. My wife steps in and helps me identify the correct nasty gram.

I step up to the machine and instead of inserting the card, you simply show the machine the magic squiggle that is printed on the nasty gram. Now, of course, it want's money. There is a snout protruding from the machine and I think it's for the credit card. It's not. There's another slot for for the card. Get that sorted, collect the receipt from the snout and we're clear.

Now we drive to the exit and show the exit machine the nasty gram and wait for a response. We don't get one. It just repeats its innocuous greeting. Only after I have been fussing with this machine for a minute or two do I realize that the gate is open. Geez, I must be slipping.