Vermonter.com

My wallet is bulging far beyond what it was intended for and it isn’t with greenbacks. I was at Barnes & Noble yesterday trying to pay for a book and they asked if I had a membership card, which I did….somewhere. It seems that my wallet has reached critical mass because after a few moments of digging, the card was nowhere to be found. Perhaps lost amidst the credit cards, medical, dental, prescription cards, WIZN card, grocery store cards and video store cards. It seems like there is a card for anything and everything you do these days. Now that we’ve run out of room for cards in our wallets, the conspiracy invades our keyrings.

Are wallets becoming obsolete? Are the days of the “man purse” looming on the horizon? For some of us that is a terrifying thought. Imagine the construction worker finishing up a hard, sweaty day of work. He enters a local mini-mart to pick up a 6-pack of Budweiser and says “uh…I’ll be right back. I forgot my purse.” The image doesn’t fit quite right does it?

The clerk at Barnes & Noble told me not to worry about the card and was able to use my phone number instead. Hmm, now maybe that would be a better method anyway than carrying around a pocketful of cards. He also mentioned that he’s seen people come in with card albums because they have so many to carry around.

What happened to the good old days of simply paying for something without having to carry around a card?