After a couple of minutes it became evident to me that the bloke at the machine was having some difficulties and I started to look around for the person that’s employed to lurk usefully around the ATMs for just such an emergency.
That useful person wasn’t there, but it was then I realised that the girl having the gushing conversation was dressed in the uniform of a bank employee, but that she also seemed oblivious to what was going on right in front of her and her fellow chatterer.
Eventually though she twigged to the problem and, without dropping a beat in her conversation took over the transaction in the most patronising way possible, leaving the poor bloke embarrassed and incidentally without the printed transaction record he said he wanted.
While she was there she fixed up her companion’s card requirements (also leaving him without a transaction record) before bidding him farewell with a big sloppy and swanning off into the bank.
My micro-Asian gave a quiet sigh of relief and trotted up to the machine and finished her business in no time flat.
It was my turn. From previous experience I knew that the Commonwealth machine was finicky about the way the bank notes were presented so I’d made sure they were as neatly arranged as I could manage. Despite my preparation the machine rejected half my notes and then decided my PIN was incorrect!
I re-entered my PIN. PIN incorrect! Again. Same result. Thankfully I managed to retrieve my card and money without assistance, apologised to the young man patiently waiting for the silly old codger to sort himself out and strode seething to the lone teller on duty.
I recognised her as the lady with the receding hairline who used to serve me when the tellers’ counters were a throbbing hub of activity. I thought her hair had receded a bit further than I remembered. ‘How’s your day been so far?’ she enquired.
I told her.
She suggested I could resolve the situation by updating my PIN on the Net.
On the way out of the bank I found the chap who should’ve been monitoring the ATM earlier and told him what had transpired. I’m not sure he understood me entirely and I certainly didn’t understand him so I bristled off home and tried to update my PIN as the balding teller lady had suggested.
It was then and only then that I got some dull apprehension that my not reading the original explanatory letter was the genesis of my problem. I managed to find the letter again and immediately understood that I had in fact cut up the wrong card and that ill-judged decision accounted for the ‘PIN incorrect’ message at the ATM and for my teller-assisted deposit going into the wrong account.
Fortunately, once I’d realised what had happened it was comparatively easy to apply for a replacement card as a ‘damaged or lost card’, but of course I still felt like an old goose.

The band played a lovely gig down at Ocean Grove a few weeks back and because Daryl left a bit earlier than us I’d put his cash in an envelope to pass it on to him at the next gig. I left the envelope (marked only ‘Daryl – Cousin Kev’s’ plus the amount due) with the rest of my ‘mess’ on the dining table – my ‘mess’ is frowned upon in certain quarters but in deference to my extreme age and possibly good looks it’s regularly tidied up but never entirely removed.
About half way through the week Maria asked me to get something from Coles and I saw an opportunity to post a letter that was overdue to be posted and grabbed the envelope from my pile of important stuff – otherwise known as my ‘mess’.
You can see where this is going. My Coles assignment proved to be more difficult and took longer than I thought and I was in a hurry to get home and didn’t look at the envelope at all as I posted it in a post box on the way home (still a matter of amazement for my fastidious partner). And so it came to pass that when I got home, verily I saw there was still an envelope in my pile, an envelope with a stamp on it, very much like the one I thought I’d already posted.
The blood must’ve drained from my face because Maria put to me that I’d accidentally posted Daryl’s money in an unaddressed and stamp-less envelope - and I had to confess that it very much looked like it and I was contemplating another quite big mistake that I’d made.
You might have gathered that Maria’s quite a motivating influence in my life and in no time at all I was back at the post box where the mis-posting incident had occurred and transcribing the suggested emergency number into my mobile phone.
Naturally enough everybody at Australia Post was being run off their feet delivering parcels from Amazon to their culture-hungry clients and couldn’t get to the phone, so I thought that maybe I should pop down to the Pinewood Post Shop and see if I could persuade someone to do something by dint of my personal magnetism. In fact, I wasn’t holding out too much hope of that due to some run-ins with the staff there on previous occasions.
Fortunately an Australia Post van was sitting outside the Pinewood Post Shop and I spoke to a charming postal employee, or more likely contractor, who gave me Bob’s number at Gilby Rd and said that Bob could probably sort it out for me.
Which, believe it or not, is exactly what happened. Within perhaps forty minutes Bob had called me back saying the envelope in question had been retrieved and I just needed to pop down to Gilby Rd, a matter of three minutes’ drive from home, and I could pick it up!
And that’s what I did. The envelope and the money were intact, something I honestly expected would be the case. In fact, and I think my partner would vouch for this, I was optimistic of a good result almost from the moment I discovered my error. Bob said this sort of thing happens all the time and I almost believe him. There’s a lot of us Baby Boomers all hitting our golden years at the same time and I expect that society is going to have to get used to mopping up after us for a while yet.