kartooner.com

A co-worker of mine (we’ll call him Tod) relayed a thought of his dealing with a particular situation that he’s had to cope with in the past. He mentioned that whenever he uses an ATM sometimes he’ll find a balance receipt hanging from the slot, the result of someone walking away without first either:

• Taking their balance receipt and stuffing it into their pockets, or simply
• Crumbling the receipt into a ball and shooting a free throw into the trash.

His first instinct is to look at the receipt. Upon doing this you are given a glimpse into another persons bank account and sometimes depending on the situation this will either make you look superior or inferior (mental note: don’t look at receipt if the fellow rides up in a Ferrari) in regards to your financial predicament.

He says his wife gets after him for doing this — I’m assuming because of privacy issues — and scolds him for looking at the balance of a stranger’s account. Yet, this seems superfluous to me considering the receipt doesn’t show the name of the account holder. Rather a typical ATM receipt only shows the last four digits o f the account, the transaction activity (be it a withdrawal, deposit or both) and the ending balance.

To be honest, I too am at fault for doing this. It’s an immediate reaction to look, similar to our instinct to pry into other people’s lives at times. Just the other day I found a receipt showing an ending balance of $105.00. Was it necessary that I pick up the paper lying just beneath the slot? Not really.

However, it makes for a good observation and the greatest material for writing and comedy routines comes from reality — from real life situations and occurences (not including “scripted” reality television).