From the time I’ve had a credit card (which is about 6+ years now), I have always preferred using it for any major transaction, be it settling a restaurant bill, at the gas station, hotel booking, flight booking .. you name it. I never carry much cash on me, I draw about 500 - 1000 bucks (depending on which part of the month it is) from the ATM and wait till it gets exhausted before I reload my wallet.
It once happened that I opened my wallet in front of my team members at office and a girl who happened to get a glimpse of the 20 odd bucks in the wallet promptly commented “Hey, You just have about 20 bucks in the wallet, What if the cop catches you?” The very same day on my way back home from office, I jumped a signal and the cop caught me. What happened then, I will keep that for another day. The way tipping off cops when you are caught has become a de facto these days, so it has for me that credit cards would work almost everywhere.
About 2 weeks ago, my wife, my parents and I had been to Chandni Chowk – a pompous Dhaba in Koramangala. I have always liked the food there, and whenever I feel like having some good Punjabi food, this is the first place that comes to my mind. After the dinner, As usual, I pulled out my credit card to settle the bill which was about 1500 bucks. About 10 mins later the guy who took the card got back “Sir, It is not working”. Even then, It did not strike to me that it was time to come up with a Plan - B to pay the bill. I pulled out another card and gave it to him “Probably, there is something wrong with the first one, Try this..It should work”. This time, all the 4 pairs of eyeballs followed him to the credit card machine and we were waiting for the yellow slip to just slide out of the machine after he swiped the card.
(OK, this reminds me.. I will write sometime about the different incidents where I have badly stared at the credit card machine to pop out the yellow slip)
Come on… Come on.. Nope, it did not. “Sir, there is no problem with your card. The card machine is not working today”.
Ahh.. For all that Risk Management I had learnt and practiced in my projects, I had never ever thought of a mitigation plan for this event. We all reached to our wallets to see if we could manage to bring out 1500 bucks. No way.. we could not even get to the 50% mark.
Having worked for 3 companies so far, apart from the different visiting cards I have of my own in my wallet, I have also added in 3 debit / ATM cards, one from each company.
“So, which one of these ATMs is the closest? ICICI / Citibank / HSBC?”
“Sir, There is an ICICI and a Citibank ATM about 2 kms from here”
Thankfully, we have ATMs which are open 24*7. What if they were to close at 6 PM like the banks which my dad always keep forcing me to open an account with.
When I just try to associate this incident to those good old days when I had just started working (about 7 years ago), when dining out was much more than it is today, when there used to be lot of days left in the month after the salary used to get over, I fail to imagine what I would have done in such a situation.
BTW, It was then about 7 years ago when this name “Cashless Carnival” was formed and it has stuck on all this while ;)
