They Walk Among Us

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They Walk Among Us

Postby Ralph E. Powers » Feb 9, 2007 11:40 am

some old, some new (at least to me)....


I walked into a Blimbie's with a buy-one-get-one-free coupon for a sandwich. I handed it to the girl and she looked over at a little chalkboard that said "buy one-get one free". "They're already buy-one-get-one-free", she said, "so I guess they're both free".
She handed me my free sandwiches and I walked out the door. They walk among us and many work retail.
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A friend of mine bought a new fridge for his house. To get rid of his old fridge, he put it in his front yard and hung a sign on it saying: "Free to good home. You want it, you take it." For three days the fridge sat there without even one person looking twice at it. My friend decided that people were too untrusting of this deal. It looked too good to be true, so he changed the sign to read: "Fridge for sale $50."

The next day someone stole it. They walk among us.
--------

One day I was walking down the beach with some friends when one of them shouted, "Look at that dead bird!" Someone looked up at the sky and said,"Where?" They Walk among us!
====================

While looking at a house, my brother asked the real estate agent which direction was north because, he explained, he didn't want the sun waking him up every morning. She asked, "Does the sun rise in the north?" When my brother explained that the sun rises in the east, and has for sometime, she shook her head and said, "Oh, I don't keep up with that stuff." They Walk Among Us!!
====================

I used to work in technical support for a 24/7 call center. One day I got a call from an individual who asked what hours the call center was open. I told him, "The number you dialed is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week." He responded, "Is that Eastern or Pacific time?" Wanting to end the call quickly, I said, "Uh, Pacific." They Walk Among Us!
====================

My colleague and I were eating our lunch in our cafeteria, when we overheard one of the administrative assistants talking about the sunburn she got on her weekend drive to the shore. She drove down in a convertible, but "didn't think she'd get sunburned because the car was moving." They Walk Among Us!
====================

My sister has a lifesaving tool in her car designed to cut through a seat belt if she gets trapped. She keeps it in the trunk. They Walk Among Us!
====================

My friends and I were on a beer run and noticed that the cases were discounted 10%. Since it was a big party, we bought 2 cases. The cashier multiplied 2 times 10% and gave us a 20% discount. They Walk Among Us!
====================

I was hanging out with a friend when we saw a woman with a nose ring attached to an earring by a chain. My friend said, "Wouldn't the chain rip out every time she turned her head?" I explained that a person's nose and ear remain the same distance apart no matter which way the head is turned. They Walk Among Us!
====================

I couldn't find my luggage at the airport baggage area, so I went to the lost luggage office and told the woman there that my bags never showed up. She smiled and told me not to worry because she was a trained professional and I was in good hands. "Now," she asked me, "has your plane arrived yet?" They Walk among Us!
====================

While working at a pizza parlor I observed a man ordering a small pizza to go. He appeared to be alone and the cook asked him if he would like it cut into 4 pieces or 6. He thought about it for some time before responding. "Just cut it into 4 pieces; I don't think I'm hungry enough to eat 6 pieces." Yep, They Walk Among Us!
====================

They walk among us, AND they reproduce
Without the possibility of death, adventure is not possible. ~ Reinhold Messner


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Postby bigalpha » Feb 9, 2007 2:52 pm

Oh man, I want pizza!
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Postby Phil Winkler » Feb 9, 2007 3:44 pm

This man is at the airline counter attempting to pay for his ticket with his credit card. The young lady hands him his card back stating she is unable to verify his identity because the card isn't signed on the back.

The guy whips out his pen and quickly signs the card and hands it back and the girl completes the transaction.

He has to ask how his signing the card verified his identity? To which the girl smirked, shook her head up and down and said "Exactly..that's why we check!"

They walk among us....
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Postby Ralph E. Powers » Feb 10, 2007 10:10 am

Phil Winkler wrote:This man is at the airline counter attempting to pay for his ticket with his credit card. The young lady hands him his card back stating she is unable to verify his identity because the card isn't signed on the back.

The guy whips out his pen and quickly signs the card and hands it back and the girl completes the transaction.

He has to ask how his signing the card verified his identity? To which the girl smirked, shook her head up and down and said "Exactly..that's why we check!"

They walk among us....

Purty stoopid alright... actually the BEST thing to do is sign on the back of the card "check i.d." because then they HAVE to look at your license or whatever.
Without the possibility of death, adventure is not possible. ~ Reinhold Messner


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Dumb Question of the Year Contest

Postby Tlaloc » Feb 10, 2007 1:53 pm

In western Wyoming there are a lot of tourists that ask dumb questions. This is why there is a Wilson, Wyoming dumb question of the year contest. Two of my entries are:

I rode my bike up Teton Pass. As I got to the top, undid the toe clip on my bike and stopped a guy from large motor home asked me: "Did you ride your bike up here?".

I was skiing at the ski area with one of the ski guides and a tourist flagged us down and asked: "Which way is down?". Later we realized that the answer is "Yes".
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Postby NZcaver » Feb 10, 2007 3:44 pm

Ralph E. Powers wrote:Purty stoopid alright... actually the BEST thing to do is sign on the back of the card "check i.d." because then they HAVE to look at your license or whatever.

Actually, no. Writing "check ID" instead of signing your card is not a good idea. Protecting yourself this way is a common misconception. If you check the fine print on the back of your credit card, you should see something that says "not valid unless signed." When you receive your new card, there's usually instructions stating "sign your card immediately" or something to that effect. Technically, if you don’t sign your credit card, it isn’t legally valid and any merchant could refuse to accept it (or if they do accept it, they could be held liable for any theft instead of the credit card company). Also if you don't sign the card, and someone else uses it, you could be held responsible for any fraudulent charges. If you try using a "check ID" card at most Post Offices and other government merchants - or in non English-speaking countries where they don't understand "check ID" - you'll probably be refused.

From Visa merchant instructions for accepting an unsigned card:
“See ID” or “Ask for ID” is not a valid substitute for a signature . The customer must sign the card in your presence, after you check the cardholder’s ID . Ask the cardholder for some form of official government identification, such as a driver’s license or passport.

The real problem is that merchants seldom ask for ID like they should. Perhaps "check ID" should be boldly posted on all cards, right next to your signature block, so they remember.

They walk among us... :hairpull:
Last edited by NZcaver on Feb 12, 2007 1:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby Teresa » Feb 11, 2007 11:12 am

The real rationale for not signing credit cards is not because of the Check ID silliness. It is because if the card is lost or stolen with a signature on it, the card is much more easily used for fraudulent purchases-- all a perp has to do is forge your signature vaguely like the one on the back of the card. If, after the card is reported lost or stolen, there are disputed charges, they can go back, and look at the signature on the receipts. At least around here, one's signature is on one's drivers license--what they should actually be doing is comparing signatures of the license to the one on the receipt. Instead, they look at your face.

That being said, I'm fairly annoyed with the digital signature card readers. 1) the stylus comes off the wrong side of the reader and 2) I often don't even recognize my own signature when signed on one, as opposed to on paper, because you are trying to write with a blunt instrument on a low-friction surface.

Retinal scans, anyone?
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Postby NZcaver » Feb 11, 2007 6:00 pm

But if you don't sign your card you're in violation of your agreement as a cardholder, plus the perp that steals it can just sign their own name on it and they're good to go.

I seem to do OK with POS digital signature pads (unlike those handheld UPS ones - every time an unreadable scrawl). My electronic credit card signature seems to come out OK, it's *usually* checked against my card by clerks, and has never been questioned. They either ask for ID as standard procedure at the beginning of the transaction, or not at all. The "stylus on the wrong side" thing - I assume you're a lefty? Never thought about that being a problem, but I guess it is.

Retinal scans, fingerprint readers, facial recognition... all good stuff. Can't see the privacy advocates being too happy about that being incorporated in your credit card account, though.
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Postby fuzzy-hair-man » Feb 11, 2007 9:05 pm

Teresa wrote:The real rationale for not signing credit cards is not because of the Check ID silliness. It is because if the card is lost or stolen with a signature on it, the card is much more easily used for fraudulent purchases-- all a perp has to do is forge your signature vaguely like the one on the back of the card. If, after the card is reported lost or stolen, there are disputed charges, they can go back, and look at the signature on the receipts. At least around here, one's signature is on one's drivers license--what they should actually be doing is comparing signatures of the license to the one on the receipt. Instead, they look at your face.


Have you tried forging someone's signature? (just for fun) I agree it is not very hard to get something someone wouldn't spot but it takes time to do it and it would be difficult (need a fair amount of practice) to forge someones signature in a fluent motion so that the store's staff do not become suspicious. By not signing your card as NZCaver says youv'e just let the thief put anything in there, youv'e solved that problem for them.

All of which is pretty irrelevant if you use the card to order over the internet or over the phone which has no signature or PIN protection. I guess the thief does have to give an address though if they want to recieve the goods.

OK so you don't sign your credit card so they don't have an example signature but you loose or have stolen your wallet/handbag your driver's licence will presumably be in there too so won't it have your signature on it?

The fact that banks cover credit card purchases from lost or stolen cards is almost as good as an admission by the banks that the system is insecure just they don't have a better one.

A better system might be to have the signature stored electronically on the card so that the operator can compare the signature stored on the card to the one youv'e just signed but a thief is unable to visibly see the signature to forge it. Of course it wouldn't be long before card readers capable of reading the signature came out but at least you have raised the level of sophisication required by the thief. Has this been tried already?
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Postby Teresa » Feb 11, 2007 11:10 pm

fuzzy-hair-man wrote:[

Have you tried forging someone's signature? (just for fun) I agree it is not very hard to get something someone wouldn't spot but it takes time to do it and it would be difficult (need a fair amount of practice) to forge someones signature in a fluent motion so that the store's staff do not become suspicious.


Actually, it isn't very difficult for me at all, if I have a sample to work from. Of course, I can also mirror-write fluently (that is write backwards, from right to left, and not labor over each letter, and NOT using a mirror.) And my signature doesn't always look the same forwards, unless I take pains to make it so. With all the name changes most women have (in my case, I often have to sign checks first with a name I don't use, but some think is mine, and then with the name I do use, I've had lots of practice. Not to mention that secretaries/women have been signing bosses' and husband's names on documents and cards for years-- we get good at it. Many, many years of nun-enforced penmanship practice makes one a good forger. It's a good thing I'm honest.

On the other hand, I've had to labor over those digital signature thingies, to the extent that I have had clerks question my identity, even though the card name and the signature matched.

I really don't know why, in this day and age, anyone signs documents, anyway, except that it is a traditional practice of attesting to something.
I understand that marking an X is passe, but since the advent of the PIN protected debit card, (you put in the card, and the PIN and the ATM knows who you are) I don't know why the credit industry hasn't gone that way, too, except that some places still use the paper credit slip/call in by phone method. That too, could be used to verify an identity to a clerk-- they call in the number, they get (over the phone) the name of the card holder, when the cardholder cannot hear it.
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Postby NZcaver » Feb 12, 2007 1:17 am

Isn't it fun when these discussions swerve off topic? :big grin:

I paid for something in a store with my debit card today. (FYI Fuzzy etc - "debit card" is American-talk for an ATM/EFTPOS card. Believe it or not these cards are a relatively new concept here, compared with their 20 year plus history in some other countries.)

OK, so I have a Visa-sponsored debit card. It's one of those cool new miniature ones, about half the size of a regular card. (It swipes just the same, but you can't use it in some ATMs and pay-at-the-pump gas stations that only take full size cards.) So I pay for the item, and there's no PIN required because it prints out one of those receipts you need to sign. (Don't get me started on how you can use debit cards at some gas pumps here without even needing to enter a PIN or sign anything!) :roll: I sign the receipt, and as an afterthought I offer the card back to the guy to compare the signature. He says don't worry about it - he checked the photo on the front before he ran the card. Oh yeah, I forgot about that. :doh:

Morale of the story - maybe some of this credit card fraud would go away if we all insisted our CC companies give us photo cards. One of mine already is, but another isn't. Maybe I'll make a call...
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Postby Todd » Feb 14, 2007 1:23 pm

Just after high school I worked in a photo-copy store that would also send faxes. One day, a lady handed me a sheet of paper to fax for her. I dialed the number, stuck the sheet in the machine and let it do it's thing. A minute or two later, the paper was done scanning and the machine printed out a confirmation saying that the fax had been received at the other end.
I hand the two sheets to the lady and tell her it will be $1.
"You mean I have to pay even if it didn't go?" she asks.
"No, it went through," I said "See on the confirmation report... '1 page sent'"
"Then what's THIS?" she asked, waving her original letter around frantically.
It took me a few minutes to convince her that the teleporter hasn't been invented yet. Maybe she was from the future...

Another time when the power had gone out, a guy came running in saying "I just need one copy and I'm in a hurry."
"Sorry," I said, "the power is out in the whole building and I don't know when it will come back on"
"But I just need ONE copy!"
I explained that the copiers need power to work.
"You're telling me I can't get just ONE copy?!!!"
"Not until the power comes back on"
"Not even ONE?!"
After a few more rounds of this he gave me a dirty look and stormed out of the place. I don't think he believed me.

Ah, retail.
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Postby Dane » Mar 18, 2007 7:39 am

My brother-in-law stopped on the side of the road to help a damsel in distress.
He looked under the hood at all of the obvious possibilities for the car not running.
Finally, he asked her to turn the ignition switch on, looked at the fuel gauge and told her that he thought it was just empty.
Her response?
"Well, will it be OK to drive it to the gas station like this?"
"Uh...yes ma'am, if you can get it started"

(btw, he did go get some fuel)
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Postby Princess Butterfly » Mar 30, 2007 4:59 pm

NZcaver wrote:Morale of the story - maybe some of this credit card fraud would go away if we all insisted our CC companies give us photo cards. One of mine already is, but another isn't. Maybe I'll make a call...


Yeah, but they would actually have to check the cards to make this work. If you use the selfcheckout at Walmart or Home Depot you can spend a substantial amount and not show a soul your credit card, same as gas pumps. Home Depot is funny in that they insist on seeing a card if you go to a check out lane with a person, but I could spend $60 there yesterday at selfcheckout and not show anyone the card.
See you on a long rope soon,

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Postby NZcaver » Mar 30, 2007 5:06 pm

Princess Butterfly wrote:
NZcaver wrote:Morale of the story - maybe some of this credit card fraud would go away if we all insisted our CC companies give us photo cards. One of mine already is, but another isn't. Maybe I'll make a call...


Yeah, but they would actually have to check the cards to make this work. If you use the selfcheckout at Walmart or Home Depot you can spend a substantial amount and not show a soul your credit card, same as gas pumps. Home Depot is funny in that they insist on seeing a card if you go to a check out lane with a person, but I could spend $60 there yesterday at selfcheckout and not show anyone the card.

True. Ah, the convenience of self-checkout. :wink:

Perhaps getting a credit card with a PIN number assigned to it would be the answer? Not sure if they even do that any more, but the first CC I owned required a PIN...
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