Visa, Master Card, and Discover

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Zum Gali Gali rubber stamps now accepts credit cards, as of my phone call from Natalie at the Novus call center in Ohio this morning. We knew that they would train us on the use of the point-of-sale terminal, but until I made the appointment last week I thought someone would be coming over here. No, it’s all done over the phone. That turns out to be fine, since it’s really simple to use. When you think about it, it had better be really simple to use. All the cashiers that you complain about know how to use them, right? Swipe customer card. Put in the amount, hit enter. Print a second copy? hit yes or no. Just read the prompts and follow them. That’s about it. You have to know how to do voids (if the customer comes back later that day to ask for their money back) and refunds (if the customer comes back the next day) and batch uploads. Though the terminal phones in for authorization for each sale, you get a single electronic funds transfer per day for the total amount. A void just cancels the transaction so it isn’t in the batch upload and isn’t counted in the daily totals. “Like a marriage that hasn’t been consummated, so it can be annulled and it never happened at all,” I said to Natalie.

In a tribute to the continuity and reality of the external world, the branch that I cut down on Friday didn’t hit me today.

Arlene hadn’t thought about supper, so we walked out to a hole-in-the-wall Chinese place a couple of blocks away. On the way back, I said, “By the way, see this tree?”

“Yes,” she said. “There’s something hanging down. It’s hit me twice when I’ve gone by in the white car. I wish somebody would do something about it.”