From: howdHol@yaooho.com   
      
   Boron Elgar  wrote   
      
   > One of my pet peeves when we drive out of NJ (alas, current the lack   
   > of road trips or dim sum are my personal sadnesses at all this   
   > end-of-world pandemic) the variations from one gas station's pumps and   
   > payments to another drive me bats.   
      
   Some automated interfaces seem to have gotten better. ATMs seem to have   
   gotten a lot better -- more reliable at reading cards and much more   
   convenient for deposits. They read checks and handle creased bills a lot   
   more reliably, and the screens are a lot better and easier to read. They   
   seem to have figured out the flow of transactions better too.   
      
   Obviously they're trying to reduce the number of tellers, but I'm sure   
   they're also trying to capture customers so they can be upsold on   
   financial services.   
      
   Gas stations almost certainly pay employees less than banks, but it   
   still seems dumb to drive people away from payments at the pump and   
   toward the cashier.   
      
   Unless, I guess they are trying to drive up sales of snacks and drinks   
   with a higher profit margin, but even then pump space is often at a   
   premium, and if you're driving up the transaction time for gas-only   
   purchases, you're driving away customers when the pumps are tied up with   
   gas-only purchasers. There are several stations near me, and I'll often   
   pass up the closest one because it looks too hard to find a pump there.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)