Chip and Pin

Great thing, chip and pin. Just one gripe - it makes shop assistants think I'm stupid.

The thing is, I know how to work a chip and pin machine thingy. I know which way my card goes in, I know how to type in my pin number, and I know to when to take my card out. After all it's not difficult, and there's handy instructions on the little screen. Having said that, I'm still probably in the minority.

The problem is that the shop assistant sees those instructions on their screen a second before I do. So, just before I see the instruction to 'Insert Card' the shop assistant says "Insert your card", with a hint of impatience. A split second before I see 'Enter Pin', the shop assistant tells me to enter my pin. And not wanting to remove my card before the machine has finished with it, I wait for the screen to tell me to 'Remove Card', by which time of course, the shop assistant has already told me to remove it as if I was an imbecile just staring at the screen waiting for a doughnut to pop out.

Now, I understand that this, along with most of my rants, probably doesn't register on your radar. But I've just been to B&Q for the fourth weekend in a row and I just had to get it off my chest.

All I'm asking here is for one second to prove my technological superiority over the other 75% of the population. Is that too much to ask?