Ugh, sara, I hope this week is less painful than you think it's going to be.

I won awards for my penmanship in grade school. The Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary were relentless taskmasters in teaching the Palmer Method. If they could see me now.... The pen does not come off the paper for my signature. It's barely recognizable as my name, which gives it the added benefit of being difficult to forge.

This has lead to the REALLY secure method of me writing the person's number down on a post it note, charging them the next day, and then shredding it. This is rather ridiculous.

@@ (Everlasting thanks to Jesse for a typewritten means of expressing how my eyeballs have rolled right out of my head into the next ZIP code.)

We're old, people.

We are not. We're just more experienced.

Yeah, it doesn't really surprise me. I keep a personal cell, even though work issues me a treo because I like to keep my work and home life separate, but I know a lot of people who don't.

Vortex and I are as one. I have a work BlackBerry and a personal BlackBerry (I like the QWERTY keyboard for texting.) because work does not need to know what I do outside of the office.

{{{Theo}}}

I always love when cashiers scrutinize your signatures, because 1) they never are even close for me (credit card being ultra neat and the slip being a train wreck), and 2) unless they are handwriting experts in their spare time, they really aren't in a place to judge anything at all.

When I worked retail, we were required to compare signatures. There's a section in the merchant agreement with most card brands that, at the point of sale, a reasonable effort must be made to ensure that it's the person named on the card signing the slip, or the merchant may be held liable for fraudulent use. And by reasonable, they mean the legal "reasonable person" standard. I was trained to ask for backup ID if I had any doubts. I would frequently ask for a driver's license because I'm not a handwriting expert. Most customers were fine with it and appreciated the extra precaution, but I'd always get a few that went ballistic. Fine, you don't want to hand over the license, then you don't want to buy this suit and top.

It still surprises me when women come in with their husbands' cards, and are surprised when I won't accept it. If it's a joint account, you should have your own card.

Or teenagers with one of their parents' cards. I worked in a Banana Republic in a ritzy mall. You'd have thought I was depriving them of life, liberty and basic sustenance.

edited to send mouth~ma to Gloomcookie.

I have a roll of IR film sitting in my fridge waiting to be used. I just don't have anywhere near dark enough to load and unload it.

When I got my tires rotated last week, the guy at the counter asked for my ID to check the signature on my credit card. I said I was glad he asked and he told me he had recently caught a stolen credit card that someone had tried to use - he was suspicious and wouldn't take it and when he called the credit card company after the suspicious characters flounced off they confirmed that the card was stolen.

Or teenagers with one of their parents' cards. I worked in a Banana Republic in a ritzy mall. You'd have thought I was depriving them of life, liberty and basic sustenance.

So much this. I've watched teenaged girls' heads explode.

My boss gave me his credit card to buy some stuff once. No one seemed to notice I wasn't Louis.

OTOH, when I was a bank teller, I got to reject a kid trying to get a cash advance off his father's credit card. And it was my nemesis's brother, so even more fun.

I think in a lot of the stores where you run your own card in the little ... machine thingie, it's sort of pointless to check, I guess. But we don't use that yet, and my managers are really firm about checking, and what cards we can take, etc.

So much this. I've watched teenaged girls' heads explode.

One time, a girl came back with mall security, demanding that she be allowed to purchase the merchandise. She claimed discrimination in recounting her tale to the guard, but she also left out a few very important facts. Once the guard found out she wanted to pay with daddy's platinum Amex and not a card in her own name, he very politely told her to grow a brain before he hauled her down to the in-mall police station to allow the police to investigate whether it could be a stolen card.

She walked out of the store without a thing, all the while threatening to sue me, the guard, and Banana Republic because we were mean to her.

"With as closely as you were looking at the signature, I'm surprised that you didn't notice MY PHOTO on the back of the card."

I did this more than once when I worked at my friends' store. Oop!

(We checked if signature was missing or if card said "See ID").

::rolls eyes forever::

What really kills me is that parents hand their kids these cards. But who's going to be ranting if Susie's shifty friend lifts it from her purse and uses it?

I've had two nasty encounters with wives who are APPALLED I won't let them use their husband's card. "I can call him on the phone right now!"

And I'm like, "How the hell do I know who you're calling?" It's so ridiculous in this day and age. GET YOUR OWN CARD.

I keep having banana malfunctions.