Beautiful Bureaucracy: Episode 2
It’s Sunday evening, the day of a huge party at my house. But I’m far away in my favorite corner shop, stocking up on junk-food supplies to seek sensory refugee while I seek social refugee in the local library.
I go the cash machine at the back, one of those that used to charge £1.75 to supply you with your own money until someone realised we’re not (yet) quite as easily fooled by this redistribution of wealth in the UK as they are over in USA.
It’s not working. Error message 33. Wow, this must be a tricky one, number 33, there must be 32 more common, or at least more serious things that could go wrong with this four-foot tall metal box with it’s touch-less screen. I feel sorry for the engineer that will arrive to this perplexing task first thing on their Monday morning.
I head to the checkout to pay by card.
“Evening”, I say, “just in case you didn’t know, the cash points broken”.
“Yes yes, I know” replies the cashier. “Code number 33”.
“What’s that?”, I ask
He replies, “It’s ran out of money”.