ATM frustration...it really shouldn't be this difficult

Today my calendar reminded me that I needed to get cash for the office lottery pool - can you call just two people playing a pool?  It's a question for the ages.  We used to have a great big group of us but one by one they all started retiring and when it was down to just five of us, the other three decided to cash in and call it quits.  Those other three will be sorry when we win it!

At any rate, I made a note to myself to remember to get cash when I stopped in at Target on my lunch break.  Needless to say, I forgot.  Telling myself it was no big deal, I planned to stop at my bank's ATM, which was on the way back to the office.  Which is a good thing because the only reason I remembered to stop was because I saw the building.

It must be said, I rarely visit the bank's ATM.  Ninety-nine percent of the time when I need cash, I just get cash back from an in-store transaction.  So, it had been maybe a year ago that I had last visited this particular ATM.

I pulled into the ATM drive through lane and immediately noticed that they had a new machine - which, honestly, seemed weird as this particular bank has recently been bought out...by their next door neighbor.  What can I say?  That particular corner is home to at least five banks.

But other than thinking that their timing was off, I went ahead and inserted my card.  When it asked for my PIN number, I keyed it in and hit enter.  And this was where it all went to hell in a hand basket.

The way it used to work is it would ask me if I wanted to withdraw money, make a deposit, etc.  This time it asked me if I wanted to check my bank balance, transfer money, make a deposit, or more services.

Do you see what I see?

That's correct, there was no option for withdrawing cash.  So I clicked on more services.  Again, no option for withdrawing cash BUT from this screen I could set up my ATM preferences - umm, I didn't know I needed ATM preferences.

At first I thought I had missed something from the get go.  So I canceled the entire transaction and started again.  Turns out I didn't miss anything that I could see, there was no option for actually withdrawing cash.  I mean, I'm sure it's there SOMEWHERE as there was the slot for dispensing said cash, but what the trick is to getting it to give me the cash eluded me.  And I really didn't have the time to spend trying to figure out what it was...given my lunch hour was more than over at this point.

Needless to say, I'm sure there will be a video of me cursing the machine and calling it names circulating within the branches in the coming days.  Let's just hope it doesn't find it's way to YouTube where it would certainly become a viral sensation.   And then the local news would pick up the story and the tag line would be, "Tonight at six, a local woman flummoxed by an ATM machine, can you believe it?  Haha."

At any rate, since my own actual bank is refusing to give me money; now I have to try and remember tomorrow to get the cash from my usual source...Target.  *sigh*