Sep 14, 2012

K-Fail of the Day: The Bank Incident

This is the next  installment in a series called "K-Fails", in which Meg does something dumb because she can't speak Korean.

This story has two parts.

I have recently acquired a Korean bank account. Koreans do their banking a little differently. For one thing, everyone gets a passbook, not unlike the bank books that used to come standard with every account in the US. But these have a magnetic strip on them, and you theoretically stick it into the machine and it updates it.... or.... something. The whole thing is still a little unclear to me.  I decided to test this theory out. I took my passbook to the (all Korean) ATM and stuck it in the slot with the picture of a passbook. Immediately, the machine started beeping and saying very stern things in Korean, while I frantically tried the universal strategy for making a computer stop doing whatever it's doing: push all the buttons. It goes without saying that this strategy was less than effective. This all happened in a tiny ATM vestibule with at least 3 Koreans using/waiting to use the machines. I still have no idea what was going on, but it took about 2 minutes to spit my passbook back out.  Meanwhile, the Koreans waiting in line at the ATM are rolling their eyes at the stupid foreigner who got her passbook stuck in the machine.


This brings me to part two. After that little debacle, I decided I really needed a debit card (I'd already decided this, but that just reinforced it). I wasn't able to get one when I opened my account because they needed my passport number. So, I went back, passport copy in hand. The nice lady handed me the form to fill out, and highlighted the areas where I needed to put my phone number and name. I started writing my number and she said "oh....that's where your name goes." I looked at the paper and sure enough, 2 lines below the one I was writing on was a highlighted line with a picture of a phone.  Stupid American can't even fill out a form.

K-fail. Squared.

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