Chip & Pin

What annoys you most about Chip & Pin? Apart from the fact that you may have lost thousands if your card has been cloned, of course?

For me, it's the fact that (I assume) the checkout operator's workstation indicates that the card machine is ready to accept your PIN a fraction of a second before the card machine itself does. That's the only reason I can think of to explain the EXTREMELY IRRITATING fact that, at the very split-second the machine displays "Please enter your PIN" the checkout person will say "can you put your PIN in please?"

Yes!! I *know* I have to put my PIN in for God's sake! I was waiting for the machine to tell me it was ready! I can't type it in BEFORE, can I? So just shut up and give me a chance to do what I already knew I would have to do, at the time I'm invited to do it!

Actually I've developed a kind of sixth sense that tells me when the machine is about to ask me for my PIN, so I can start putting it in AS THE PROMPT APPEARS! Brilliant. I can't tell you how satisfying it was the first time the words "can you put your PIN in please?" died in the throat of the checkout girl as she realised I was already halfway through it.

Small pleasures :o)