Making eye contact with someone as you approach a cash point is potentially catastrophic move to make. Particularly if that person is a woman, and you are man (like what I am).

It is a bad move because a) You then feel obliged by the crappy laws of chivalry to let her go first at the machine, and b) because women simply cannot just withdraw money, and move on.

She entered her card and PIN number, then made some umming and arrring noises, and selected a mini statement or balance, which the machine then printed it. She looked at it like it was a message from God, and then read it. Then screwed it up and threw it away.

By this time her card had been ejected, at which point she put it straight back in. She then asked for some cash (via the keypad – she was rubbish at using an ATM, but I think even she realised that speaking to a machine would be mental), and also asked for a receipt. Which she then screwed into a ball and threw into the bin.

Men go up to cashpoints, put in their PIN, press the cash only button, select upwards of £50 and move on. If the banks undertook some analysis of cash machine use, I am sure you would see that women spend much longer using them than men. Perhaps a bank will bring out speed-ATM’s, like the 10 items or fewer queue in the Supermarket, which will not allow you to print anything or find anything out, just give you cash. Then women could take as long as they like at the normal cash machines and not steal a whole minute of my life.

Then everyone would use these new speed cash-points like a man. Women, please try and do the same.

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