The signature makes the man

The signature Dodge Wave

We paid our first visit to a Lowe’s today, stopping in at the store on Castlefield on our way home. It’s just your typical big box store with not much remarkable about it. On this particular afternoon, the employees outnumbered the shoppers, yet true to big box form, the employees managed to be anywhere but where they could answer questions.

When checking out with a credit card, they have you sign one of those digital pads like UPS or Purolator. Maybe I don’t get out enough, but it seemed a little odd to me. I don’t exactly wear a tinfoil hat, but as an IT guy who’s spent far too much time reading the PCI security standards lately, I’m not a big fan of digitizing my signature into the same system that just swiped my credit card.

Partly because no one actually checks signatures any more anyway, and partly because I still remember Zug‘s inspiring credit card prank from I don’t know how many years ago, I decided to sign with a simple undulating wave. What I didn’t realize was that they would print it out on the receipt and hand it back to me. Risa can never keep a straight face when I step outside the socially-acceptable box, and neither could I when I discovered that I got to keep a record of my protest against digital silliness, no matter how trivial it may seem. It’s not like I was signing with stick men or hieroglyphics. Maybe next time.

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