You must be smarter than the machine.

[LoTech]

With the temperatures around here getting into the forties, folks were lined up yesterday to wash their cars.

I chose a convenience store with an automatic car wash, went in and bought a code for it at the register, and got in line with my car to wait my turn. I knew the woman in the bright red Prius in front of me was going to be trouble when she had to open her door in order to reach the drive-up kiosk thing where you input your payment. Really, who buys a bright red Prius? It says bad things about either your judgement or your driving skill if you are unable to place your vehicle within arm's reach of your objective while creeping along at a walking pace. Then she tried to feed some kind of pre-printed certificate into the bill-feed on the machine. Which was returned. Over and over again. Finally, she switched to actual paper money. Wrinkled bills that not even the most charitable person could call flat. Which were rejected by the bill-feed, unsurprisingly. She had gotten one dollar to be taken by the time that the car in front of her was being dried. At which point she abandoned her Prius to walk around to the front of the building and complain that the machine "wasn't working"! After the six cars that she just waited behind had no trouble using it? Riiiiiight.
I am afraid that I wasn't feeling either charitable or patient, so I felt the need to get out if my car and point out to her that the car wash was, in fact, empty and we were all waiting on her, so I got to hear her excuses. The guy from the next car took the rather more productive tack of just taking her money and Doing It For Her. Which went flawlessly.
None of which stopped her from pulling aside after her car was washed in order to drag the store clerk over to stand with her as she stared mystified at my car rolling out from under the blowers and the next car receiving its underbody flush from the supposedly malfunctioning machine.

Why do I suspect that the phrase "This happens to me all the time" was used? And that she has similar troubles with any machine more complex than a toaster?

Bill readers are stupid; mostly they just measure how long the piece of paper is. Mostly. If the end is folded over, that changes his long it is, and it won't work. How does anyone in this day and age not understand that?

[MoonCat]

I have trouble with wrinkled bills, I try to only use nice smooth ones when using a machine that takes bills. But the machine must have to read something off the bill, otherwise a lot more people would get away with just feeding in plain paper cut to the right size and shape...wouldn't they?

In which I suspect her printed certificates or whatever they were, were actually the problem.

[Lovecats]

I used to work at a dry cleaners with a very moody soda machine. We would hard press our dollar bills so it would take them.

[Dreamstalker]

I love it when an SC is complaining about "it's not working!" while people are stepping around them and using the machine just fine.

Our SCOs can be very fussy about bills. Every so often one will decide not to take fresh-from-the-ATM ones. If a bill is damp all of them reject it, unless you feed it in upside down (any other upside down bills it won't take, go figure) during a full moon on a day that ends in X. None of the older-design bills, and I have seen it accept and reject $2 bills. There must be some sort of sensor beyond an optical one, as I've had bills that look fine but feel just a tad off (gone through the washer, etc) that it doesn't like.

Occasionally I'll get (or see) bills that have what looks like the remains of a dye pack on them. Those get rejected all the time.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Here's what the thread title made me think of:

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I AGREE

[AmbrosiaWriter]

...I was going to buy a bright red Prius, the only reason I didn't was because they didn't have any on the lot and I really needed the car. So mine's dark blue.

Anyway; I agree on the whole arm's length thing. Then again, I'm super paranoid about hitting anything so I tend to be safe rather than sorry. I'd prefer opening my car door and leaning out than having a ding (even if I'm no where near close lol!)

I'm just glad the auto-wash near me (that does an awesome deal!) the guys/gals operating it do the whole payment thing for you. Pull up, they give your car a nice pre-wash of spraying high powered soap at the car and into the wheels to make sure they get really clean, then take your payment and what option of wash you want, and then send you on your way.

Always use the Rain-X option. Rain-X is AWESOME. Love that stuff. Loooove itttttt.

[LoTech]

There is actually a magnetized wire embedded in the paper of the bill a certain distance along its length, and that measurement is different for every denomination. Which the machine recognizes by measuring from the end of the bill. If you don't make sure that the end of the bill isn't folded over, or doubled over itself somewhere along its length, then none of those measurements will be correct, and the bill will be rejected. End of story.
It makes me shake my head sadly to see people take paper money, like as change from a cashier, and just stuff it into a pocket or purse in a wad, not even bothering to fold it in half first. It makes me want to ask "Do you even think about how difficult you are making it for yourself to spend that money later?"
But of course, I don't. Because I really am afraid to hear the answer.

[EvilEmpryss]

It makes me shake my head sadly to see people take paper money, like as change from a cashier, and just stuff it into a pocket or purse in a wad, not even bothering to fold it in half first. It makes me want to ask "Do you even think about how difficult you are making it for yourself to spend that money later?"
But of course, I don't. Because I really am afraid to hear the answer.

Nope.

If you're like me, you might use a machine once or twice a YEAR, so no, I don't consider how the bills I'm putting in my purse will come out a few days later.

[Dreamstalker]

I'm guilty of stuffing change in my pocket sometimes (usually if there's a line behind me and I just want to get out of the way), but I always make sure to uncrumple/smooth the bills as much as I can the first chance I get.