Faster Is Better
Sunday, September 05, 2004
You can listen to this piece through WBEZ.
My parents always taught me that credit cards were for emergencies only, and when I acquired my first card in the summer after my freshman year of college, I took their advice pretty seriously. I only charged something to my credit card if I was sure I wanted it and also sure I could not, at that moment, pay for it. At the time, I subscribed to the "free money" theory of credit cards. So far as I could tell, I handed a piece of plastic to the lady at Target and then she handed me 11 Nintendo-64 games. It didn't cost me a dime!
Seven years later, I'm still paying for Super Mario Kart, even though I no longer have the card. When I got my first bill that summer, I realized my "free money" theory had some flaws and immediately froze the card in the center of a large block of ice, thereby preventing future impulse purchases. But then, a few months later, I found myself in a situation where I had no money and needed to buy some condoms. I was in something of a hurry, because I did not need the condoms for some vague eventuality, if you catch my drift, so I put the block of ice in the microwave for ten minutes and, sure enough, melted both the ice and my credit card. These days I restrict myself to a debit card, which is like a credit card except that instead of impulsively spending someone else's money, you're spending your own.
I can only hope that my sad story of oppressive debt and sexual frustration will serve as a stern warning to a new generation of rich-in-credit but poor-in-cash Chicagoans, because the world of plastic purchasing power is about to get Super Sized. Thanks to an executive order by Mayor McCheese, you'll soon be able to shave precious seconds off your McDonald's culinary experience by using a credit or debit card. Hallelujah! It's about time instant gratification got a little, um, instanter.
After all, I don't go to McDonald's because I want to eat a soggy reheated hamburger five minutes from now. I want my food cheap, and I want it of questionable quality, and I want it now. So I'm all in favor of McDonald's decision to expand its payment choices.
You can already use something called a Mobil Speedpass at McDonald's. I don't have the sort of credit rating that affords a person such luxuries as a Speedpass, but my friend Carlos recently bought me lunch using his Dad's, and I can report that it seemed to save us somewhere in the neighborhood of four to five seconds.
Like most Chicagoans, it's very important that I do everything as quickly as possible, because I'm in a terrible hurry. I'm the sort of person who races up the stairs to catch the el even though trains arrive every four minutes. Time has become a cherished commodity to be spent and saved judiciously, at least for those of us not currently engaged in the effort to finish Millennium Park. But, why, exactly, are we racing around? Are our lives really so important that we need to save four seconds at McDonaldland? In the end, it's a little like my discredited "free money" theory of credit cards: spending money as if we're rich doesn't make us rich, and hurrying everywhere doesn't mean we have someplace to go.
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My parents always taught me that credit cards were for emergencies only, and when I acquired my first card in the summer after my freshman year of college, I took their advice pretty seriously. I only charged something to my credit card if I was sure I wanted it and also sure I could not, at that moment, pay for it. At the time, I subscribed to the "free money" theory of credit cards. So far as I could tell, I handed a piece of plastic to the lady at Target and then she handed me 11 Nintendo-64 games. It didn't cost me a dime!
Seven years later, I'm still paying for Super Mario Kart, even though I no longer have the card. When I got my first bill that summer, I realized my "free money" theory had some flaws and immediately froze the card in the center of a large block of ice, thereby preventing future impulse purchases. But then, a few months later, I found myself in a situation where I had no money and needed to buy some condoms. I was in something of a hurry, because I did not need the condoms for some vague eventuality, if you catch my drift, so I put the block of ice in the microwave for ten minutes and, sure enough, melted both the ice and my credit card. These days I restrict myself to a debit card, which is like a credit card except that instead of impulsively spending someone else's money, you're spending your own.
I can only hope that my sad story of oppressive debt and sexual frustration will serve as a stern warning to a new generation of rich-in-credit but poor-in-cash Chicagoans, because the world of plastic purchasing power is about to get Super Sized. Thanks to an executive order by Mayor McCheese, you'll soon be able to shave precious seconds off your McDonald's culinary experience by using a credit or debit card. Hallelujah! It's about time instant gratification got a little, um, instanter.
After all, I don't go to McDonald's because I want to eat a soggy reheated hamburger five minutes from now. I want my food cheap, and I want it of questionable quality, and I want it now. So I'm all in favor of McDonald's decision to expand its payment choices.
You can already use something called a Mobil Speedpass at McDonald's. I don't have the sort of credit rating that affords a person such luxuries as a Speedpass, but my friend Carlos recently bought me lunch using his Dad's, and I can report that it seemed to save us somewhere in the neighborhood of four to five seconds.
Like most Chicagoans, it's very important that I do everything as quickly as possible, because I'm in a terrible hurry. I'm the sort of person who races up the stairs to catch the el even though trains arrive every four minutes. Time has become a cherished commodity to be spent and saved judiciously, at least for those of us not currently engaged in the effort to finish Millennium Park. But, why, exactly, are we racing around? Are our lives really so important that we need to save four seconds at McDonaldland? In the end, it's a little like my discredited "free money" theory of credit cards: spending money as if we're rich doesn't make us rich, and hurrying everywhere doesn't mean we have someplace to go.
