It's 2014, People

Sometimes I wonder what year other people are living in. Today I boarded a bus and the person in front of me paid the $2 fare with coins, which had to be dropped into the slot one by one while the rest of us waited alongside the bus in sub-20-degree weather. The driver pointed out that if she used a Charlie Card (the MBTA's refillable fare card, for those of you who aren't from the area) she would save 50 cents on each ride. The woman said, "I know," bent down to pick up the two large bags she'd had to set down to pay her fare (keeping us waiting longer), and moved back into the bus.

I get that for some people it would be a hardship to pay $48 for a monthly bus pass (or $70 for the subway and bus pass), or perhaps she doesn't ride buses frequently enough to make a monthly pass worth the cost. But that 50 cents per ride is 25% of what she had to put in the fare box; if she put $12 on a Charlie Card, she could take eight bus rides instead of six paying per ride, plus she wouldn't have to have all that change for each ride.

A bit later I was on my way home and I had to make a quick stop at the market. I got in line behind an older gentleman who was in the process of putting his purchases on the counter from his cart. He then took a blank check out of his wallet and started filling it out.

I frequently get stuck behind slow people when I'm only buying one or two items, but the check was the thing that caught my attention. I barely write checks for anything other than rent these days, and I haven't used one to pay for groceries in probably close to 20 years.

I get that not everyone is comfortable carrying large amounts of cash, but most people have at least one credit or debit card, and checking out is so much faster that way. Maybe the check-writing dude doesn't value the time of the people behind him in line, but he must value his own time. Or maybe I just think too much about these things...