I was in a Saturday morning rush and had to go to the ATM machine. Of course, there were two cars ahead of me, so I daydreamed a little, while trying to be patient. Grabbing my card from my wallet, I mumbled what I had to get done, and tried the Vulcan mind meld to hurry up the other cars.
Finally! My turn was here and I had to be quick. Now, I go to the ATM
a lot, so I know the button routines by heart, or at least I thought I did.
Pulling close to the machine, I inserted my card and held my finger
over the touchpad to be at the ready. The first screen asks if you
want instructions in English or Spanish. Well, my finger was over
the wrong button, and I hit Spanish by accident.
Holy Shit. Do I have to start over, and waste time?…or was it time
to learn Spanish? My fingers have muscle memory and usually
know what comes next. But, I was so thrown off by the mysterious
text on the buttons that I drew a blank. I had to decipher what
my options were. I know the word Si, so that was a start.
I had to trace my steps to figure out what screen I was on
until I could make out the withdrawal button, upper left
side. Bingo! I hit the right one. A screen with numbers
popped up. I was doing good, I know how to read numbers.
I plugged in $30 and hit enter (or whatever the word is in
Spanish), and my mission was complete.
For a minute, I was half expecting Pesos to come out of the machine.
Luckily that wasn’t the case. I drove away feeling really stupid, but
glad I got my money and didn’t start a new transaction after my
error. I would have lost 2 minutes of valuable time that I didn’t
have. Or, suck it up, like I did, and pretend to be Spanish speaking.
Either way, I got my money.