I'm sorry, but the mass of squiggles on the screen doesn't match your signature...

With our new advances in technology, there are bound to be some snafus, some glitches, some bugs in the system.

I love using my bank's debit card for purchasing items from the store. It's convenient and fast.

One thing that I've notice about them. Every now and then, you run across one of the signature base type thingies that you run your card through and sign that doesn't quite work correctly.

One of the bigger office supply chains is a haven for these machines. I've run across them in different cities in which I'll slide my card and then when it's time to sign my name, the writing stylus goes crazy and a mass of squiggles ensues making any hope of signing my name neat and legible slim to none. The one downside to those machines is that it's hard enough to sign my name neat when using a stylus, but when it goes haywire, even more so.

Usually when I run across those messed up signature 'consoles' (?), the cashier doesn't ask for my card to compare the signature because what would be the point, but every now and then one of them does.

"May I see your card?"

I stare down at the mass of squiggles, shrug and hand the cashier my card. The cashier will then analyze my card signature and the signature on the console. This always struck me as unusual anyway because we're at the mercy of hourly employees who've been standing around all day to suddenly become handwriting experts to stop would-be thieves who may be using a stolen card that's not theirs. But in this case, the person was a big enough expert to be able to tell what I was going for when signing. Like a subject studying an inkblot, she saw through the mass of squiggles and recognized my signature. Nice one...