Starbucks, traveler's checks, and me

Not that I would give a traveler's check at Starbucks, but some people obviously do, because there's a new policy in effect come Monday.

I stopped for my regular Tuesday afternoon tall cup of coffee and quickly noticed the sign over the cash register. Come the 25th, no more personal checks or traveler's checks. The former I understand. The latter? I had to ask. After all, traveler's checks, as I convinced many a clerk over our travels last summer, are as good as cash.

Not in the eyes of Starbucks. They are now being counterfeited. Well, now, isn't that a set-back for the traveling public. I guess the world really is coming to cards, credit, debit and otherwise. So I paid with my black $25-a-year, 10%-off-all-purchases Starbucks card (I think it's paid for itself by now and I'm on gravy), and left.

The curmudgeon strikes again

How dare I pay with cash?

I felt like the hapless customer in the debit/charge? commercial where everything is going along at a great fast-food pace and then he pulls out cash. Cash? No one deals with cash.

Would that I had learned my lesson last July when I bothered to spend leftover traveler's checks. On our trip to Houston, I had varying degrees of luck and blogged about them here, determining that I was indeed an old curmudgeon if I expected the debit card generation to recognize them as legal tender.

Some of us don't learn our lessons--or at least not quickly--but I thought I was safe with a fifty dollar bill.

Having made a DVD purchase at Best Buy, I pulled a fifty from my wallet and handed it over. The sweet young thing at the register had seen them before because she reached for the magic test-it-to-be-counterfeit pen and marked it. It passed the test. The test it didn't pass was the one with the little strip running through it. She held it to the light, she crinkled it, she sighed and looked at me.

Could I help it if it wasn't this year's model? It was an old fifty, one I'd received from cashing a check at the bank earlier in the week. And then, in a crowded store, two days before Christmas, things ground to a halt at my register.

She called the girl at the next desk. She explained the situation. I tapped my foot and waited for the manager to appear. Surely someone had seen a fifty which was older than themselves. That didn't become necessary because the second clerk, whether she had actually seen one or not, declared it to be good. Fine, my clerk answered, if it was fake, it wasn't her fault.

Things quietly resumed and, glare or no, I gathered my packages, smiled, and wished for a little more world-wisdom in the retail world.

The old fogey strikes again

Heedless of my previous traveler's check misadventures, I've proceeded apace. Without a doubt, I tempted fate by giving one at a Mexican restaurant to a cashier barely out of her teens. She was wide-eyed and whirled around to the office to ask about it. Being told that it was okay if the signatures matched, she took the check before I signed it and looked for said sigs. I explained the finer points, signed, and got my change.

Then I thought I had it made today: the cashier at an old-fashioned family-style buffet restaurant was of an age to know all about traveler's checks. Then, in fashion true to my luck, she called for a sub just as it was my turn to pay. The sub was not out of her teens and I knew I would be educating yet one more member of the populace. Sure enough, after being granted permission to take it, she looked at me and said: "What do I do with it?"

"It's like a fifty dollar bill."

"Oh!" Her face brightened and I got my change.

I'm beginning to think I should have called this blog The Old Fogey or Fuddy-Duddy: My Life and Times.

Kay, the anachronism, strikes again

Growing up, when Mother and Daddy took a trip the first thing they did to protect their funds was to buy traveler's checks. I remember in college traveling to Mexico and getting twenty dollar checks to convert. Even when we went to Australia in 2005, we took them to convert at the exchange offices. We took what was left (yes, we had some left) when we went last February, but we didn't cash a one.

It seemed the time to put them to use and, although the denomination is higher than twenty, I didn't think it would be a problem.

Enter lunch at Neiman's. The bill was nearly $30 (no complaints, it was very good!) and I asked, as a courtesy, if a traveler's check was okay. Bless her heart, the young waitress, competent in every other respect, didn't know what to do. She had to go ask. My spouse watched the action at the front desk. A conference. A phone call. Another phone call. More conferencing. Finally it was okay to sign the check.

A few take home lessons here: One, we're cashing them in tourist areas where they won't think it strange and two, we're cashing them NOW, before the little darlin's go the way of three dollar gas.