There's a terrorist in my office! Sitting in my chair, typing on my keyboard!
He must be a terrorist: he makes small purchases with cash!
From here:
Using cash for small purchases like a cup of coffee, gum and other items is a good indication that a person is trying to pass for normal without leaving the kind of paper trail created using a debit or credit card for small purchases.
Uh, yeah.
Color me old-fashioned and call me a conservative fascist Rethuglikkkan Teabagger terrorist, but when did plastic money become the normal way of paying for small fiddly stuff?
Yeah, I know: most people these days do seem to use their cards for everything. And many of them lose track of how much money is left in their accounts, and suddenly the overdraft protection kicks in, and a day's worth of small purchases gets really expensive when a half-dozen $3 transactions get tagged with $35/transaction overdraft fees.
And aren't the merchants coming out behind on this? They get charged for the card transactions, and they're not allowed to pass the cost along to the individual purchaser (courtesy of a so-called consumer-protection law that actually protects the interests of the credit-card companies).
Heck, lots of people didn't used to have bank accounts at all (and, if it weren't for the overdraft charges, the banks would be losing money on them now). Somehow, though, if you don't handle all your finances through the banking system, you can no longer be a functioning member of society. And also you're a terrorist.
(Yeah, in my case it would actually make sense to use my cards more, since it shifts the actual payment back by a few weeks, but I've always been in the habit of paying cash for groceries, gas, pet supplies, fast food, and basically anything under $20 and most things under $40, depending on how much cash I have left in my wallet.)
Afterthought: What other highly suspicious activities can we think of? Not using Facebook? Not staying signed in to your Google account? Not tweeting your every move? Not geotagging your tweets?
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