So I pulled into a drive-thru ATM on the way home. New machine type, never seen it before. While I was doing my transaction it kept whistling and beeping at me.
While removing enough Grumpy cash to keep me from being banished to the couch, I noticed this sign over the cash-slot.
"This machine has been equipped to provide audio cues for our visually impaired customers".
If you are too "visually impaired" to operate an ATM without assistance, than WHAT THE F--K ARE YOU DOING DRIVING A CAR!!!
16 comments:
People been asking this question for as long as there have been ATMs. It's on a list of imponderables I found 15 years ago, asking questions like: 'Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?' and 'Why are there braille dots on drive-up ATMs?'
Keep up the grumpiness. :-)
I'd seen the braille on regular ATM's, but this new one with the sounds was something I hadn't encountered before.
How about the sign at work which includes Braille: "Please be aware that our employees observe casual Fridays."
Ok, there's braille on the money bins at the tollplazas on Florida Turnpike....THATS not right. Then again, its Florida.
I'm just giggling out loud! You are so delightfully grumpylicious!
Psst. Similar to Happy thinking that no one in an office of blind people should need to read a magazine, people who are blind have people drive them to the ATM where they can get out and remove their money. Blind people need money on-the-go too! I would hope that if you were blind, you trusted your driver enough with your PIN number that they could just punch it in for you, but, who knows, maybe blind people don't want everyone knowing their PIN number.
It's one of those idle thoughts that come to mind while awaiting for the machine to deliver the goods. (Like who are these visually impaired--walk up customers with eye injuries, someone who's just returned from the eye doctor with dilated eyes and wearing darkest photo-gray lenses, someone who's been held-up and blindfolded and ordered to remove all their cash from the ATM, a short person that cannot see that high, or a person in a tall cab, or maybe the machine faces north or south and the driver sees into rising or setting sun, or this problem that resulted in me not realizing that I received the $500 for the customer in front of me, instead of deposit slip, when the guy in back of me had turned on his high beam headlights which shone in all my mirrors and I had just gotten off an exceedingly exhausted night shift and was absolutely blinded --all these scenarios tucked into the category of visually impaired--though it probably should be visually handicapped by whatever situation they're in?
Glad you thought to write it down, imagine there are quite a few ponderables out there.
Somebody beat me to the braille comment, but I'd be backing out seriously fast if some dude was finger reading the braille at the atm machine in front of me....
I totally understand the ticking noises at the intersection crosswalks, but drive-thru ATMs? That's something awfully new to me.
Next thing you know, the retail pharmacies are gonna pull a similar stunt like this at the drive-thru...it's going to happen!
I wondered the same thing but figured it out from a comment on someone else's blog a while back. It's so a blind person riding in a cab or getting a ride from a friend can get cash from an ATM without trusting their PIN number to someone else.
I think it's because the entire country is so structured around the automobile, the idea of even blind people not being able to drive is beyond comprehension.
It is actually because all the ATMs (and their keys) are standard manufacture, so it doesn't make sense to have a second set of keys made for drive through ATMs
that was my guess, Josh, I figured it was just too expensive to make more then one ATM model.
it's probably because the banks are worried that they'll get hit with allegations of discrimination. If people use cabs to go through the drivethru at McDonalds than it stands to reason that people will also use cabs to run through a drivethru atm.
Though I think the prize goes to the university where I did my undergrad, they put braille on all the signs for each room, unfortunately all the signs were placed either above the door or just beside the top of the doors, so unless you were 7 feet tall, the braille etching was useless.
My favorite was the walk-up transaction window at the bank. There was a sign on the drawer face which said: "Keep hands and fingers away." It was also in braille.
Braille in the elevators and stairwell signs in a parking garage is also amusing.
In the downtown area of a Midwest city they have bird sounds at the crosswalks, but I want to know how do you know which way to cross.
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