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It's a fairly well-known fact that Germany lags behind the rest of the world technologically.

Especially the UK, world leaders in plumbing (none of this complex/prone to failure combined mixed faucets – hot and cold taps are cutting edge…) and credit card fraud.

In a futile attempt to counter the latter, they've converted to "Chip and PIN" in the past couple of years.

Pretty standard sort of stuff – card data are encoded on the chip, you enter the PIN via a keypad.

Skimming-proof.

We're not that far over here.
My Visa card's got a chip but I'm buggered if I know what for.

So we're in John Lewis' cafe and I wave my card at the lad at the cashiers

"It's not 'Chip and PIN'" I said.

"Yes it is" he says

"Look" I said "I KNOW it's not"

"It's ALL Chip and PIN"

"This isn't – I have to SIGN"

"Oh" he says "we don't do THAT"

"Oh yes you do"

"Oh no you don't"

Just like a Christmas Pantomime…

Stupid bloody Poms

(They did, by the way……)