ATM Machines
The polite thing to do at the ATM machine is to make some demonstrative show of not watching the transactions of the person preceding you: like most things, politeness here being a ritual of self-serving practicality. Not, as you may expect, a naive application of the old edicts of universalisability that I can only expect other people not to steal my bank details if I am assiduous about not stealing theirs, but the certainty that any blank, oblivious stare on your part will end up resting itself on that green screen whilst simultaneously failing to flit anywhere near the lemon-lipped scowl of the twisted old card-wielder who has been waiting all day for something to complain about and, by golly, is going to get her money’s worth out of this. So the correct way to stand is half-turned away from the ATM machine, body opened out towards the rest of the world in free expression of the disdain in which all financial matters, particularly those of others, are held: EXCEPT! That this stance must be compatible not only with retention of one’s place in the queue, but also, in the event of a one-man operation, with the infinitely more difficult task of actually representing a queue to the interested observer: particularly as most ATM machines are located in such places as shopping malls and travel centres, where an insouciantly whistling bystander need not be taken to be actually waiting for anything to happen, or at least anything correlating to the operations of the nearby cash-dispensal automation. This leads to the intricate little tug-o’-war of expression that means to convince the user of one’s indifference to his actions whilst simultaneously suggesting to the onlooker the edgy table-hovering of a crowded café; indeed, that one’s entire physical manifestation is just a kind of elaborate place-holder for the abstraction of frustrated intention.
And there are two kinds of people using the ATM machine directly before you, of course. Most prevalent are the old people who don’t really know how to use it. They rustle through countless sheaths of cards, finally fumbling the correct one the correct way into the correct slot, peering gummily at the slightly-sun-obscured screen whilst holding up their hands as a sort of shield, as if even a single particle of the solar rays will be blotted out by the withered, wafer-thin obstruction of their feeble fingers. But because you are not meant to be watching, you don’t, and their protracted progress towards fiscal relief can be measured only by the machine’s emission of businesslike boooops at the keypresses of its user, boops which, like water stops on a marathon, seem to stretch further and further apart until, after a period of what must be MINUTES, one is afraid to turn around lest the crone in question should be slumped in malnutritioned death in the alcove, scant, ironic seconds away from the receipt of life-giving finances.
So much for the first kind. The second kind, however, DO know how to use ATM machines. They know, and know, and know. Standing with your back to them, you are regaled with fluid flurries of boopboopboops like the alien songs in Close Encounters, endless manipulations of branches and subbranches of text and decision until, quite sure that your fellow is composing his memoirs or playing war games with the Soviets, you spin around to find….. Well, the weirdest thing I ever found was a misshapen piece of sculpted plastic which I romantically fancied to be some elaborate kind of hacker’s lockpick, but which I have since been assured was a broken dog-leash.