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Last night I was shopping at Wal-Mart and I tried to pay for my items with, I am not making this up, a check.  I recognize that this is very old technology, but it still works…in most places.

I think it's pretty safe to assume that we all know how checks work.  I also know that it's probably been a while since you actually wrote a check.  After all, we live in an era where technology is rapidly consuming every aspect of our lives like an Ebola virus and we have things called "debit cards".  So I'll refresh your memories on how this archaic check writing technology works.

1. You open a "checking" account with a "We'll find any excuse to charge you a processing fee" financial institution of your choice, such as say, a bank.
2. The bank charges you a truckload of money for opening the account, then informs you that there will be a "printing fee" to order new checks.
3. You take your newly minted checks to a store that allegedly accepts them.
4. You write in the name of the store (or person), the amount of the check, and sign your name.
5. You give the check to the store.
6. At the end of the day, the store endorses the check, takes it and all of its other money to its own choice financial institution and deposits it.

It's pretty straight forward.  It's a low-tech way of doing business, I know.  But it's worked for over a hundred years.  Bank checks are the workhorses of the financial industry.  You and I both might think that this system would be good enough for Wal-Mart.  But the fact that we would think this in our day and age goes to show just exacly how much of our brains have been replaced by pond sludge.

Wal-Mart has some new fangled system in place that allows them to debit your checking account by reading what is known as the MICR code on the bottom of your checks and doing something called an Electronic Fingering Transaction (EFT) or something.  They then give you back the check, handing it to you like it was some vile dead animal.  How this is different from using an ATM or Debit card, I don't know.

The problem here is that, if the system doesn't work exactly the way Wal-Mart wants it, you don't get to pay by check.  My check, for some odd reason, was not being read properly by their machine.  And it wasn't for a lack of trying.  I am not making up the fact that the cashiers put it through their little device something like 30 times.  I could tell that they were on the brink of giving up and telling me that I could not give them my money.

I was all ready to remind them how the old fashioned way worked.  That the old way had worked for pretty much 99 percent of the rest of the world for centuries, and now they were going to not accept my money, as if there was never an "old way" to begin with. I also wanted to mention that by the time the machine did accept my check, we could have completed the transaction and I could have been out the door, in my truck and well on my way home if they had used the old fashioned method.  But that would have gone against the mantra of our new economy.  We have machines to help make our lives easier and give us more time.

The cashier finally called over a manager, at which point the machine finally decided to work.  It's a good thing, too.  I could tell this particular manager was no one to be trifled with and I think the machine knew it.  This manager looked like she had the authority to actually do something, like smash the machine with a sledge hammer and not get in trouble for it.  That would have been fun to witness.

I can't get on the cashiers too much, though.  It's really not their fault.  Insisting on using new methods that are so obviously better than previous methods is just another example of the top-notch logic used by Wal-Mart executives.  Such logic oozes from them like male bovine excrement. Personally, I think those guys up at Wal-Mart headquarters have been run through their check processing machines a few too many times.