YES NO ALWAYS NEVER

Today for lunch I went to the ATM and the gas station. The ATM always asks me “Do you want a printed receipt?” (even when it’s out of receipts and later asks, “I’m out of receipts, do you want to continue?”) And I always say yes (I’m a receipt collector – the whole Quicken thing). Then at the gas station I pay with a credit card, and it wants to know if I want a receipt. And makes me choose a grade of gas even though I always pick the same grade (as far as I know, anything higher than standard unleaded is a waste and causes more pollution).

Why can’t these machines have options of “ALWAYS” and “NEVER” in addition to “YES” and “NO”? I would think most people (like me) who want a receipt ALWAYS want a receipt, and those who don’t (like the slobs who answer YES then fling them on the ground near the ATM), NEVER do. Certainly this would be easy for the bank to add (as well as a selection of PREFS from the main menu to change it back).

Of course this would be more difficult at the gas station – especially if the preferences couldn’t be stored on a “smart” credit card itself. And what if you had two cars that took different grades of gas (probably pretty rare)?

And while I’m thinking about it, back when we had “regular” (leaded) and “unleaded”, whose idea was it to call standard unleaded “regular”? Was it that hard to come up with a different word, or just call it “unleaded”? In any case, “Viva Nova Sin!”.

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