On Apr 28, 2004, at 13:39, Jean Nathan wrote:
There's a report in the newspaper this morning about an ATM which gave out
twenty pound notes instead of ten pound notes. Word soon spread and people
came from around the area to take advantage - one woman even arrived wearing
curlers and a nightgown, in a taxi.
I beg to differ :) Almost 40 yrs later, I *still* remember my mother going to visit a friend in Malmo, Sweden... The lady emigrated, in '68, on so-called "Jewish papers", ie without a passport. Very many Jews were evicted from Poland at that time, but very few European countries accepted those people as permanent residents. Most spent years in "transition camps" before being re-located.
Anyway... A telephone booth in her area malfunctioned; you put in a coin for a local call and could call anyone, anywhere in the world, for an unlimited number of minutes. And, at the end, the machine spat your coin back, too :)
According to my mother (who -- unexpectedly, but naturally enough -- called us in Warsaw <g>), the general procedure was the same: people came from all over Malmo (and, sometimes from beyond), and all politely waited their turn for the free phone call. They too had an unwritten rule of "one call, go back to the end of the queue for the next"
And they kept *mum*; 3 months later, when my father went to visit, he called -- also for free - from the same booth :)
I think, in addition to the -- innate, IMO -- dishonesty of humans, one has to consider another factor, and that's the "victory" of humankind over the "damned machine" every time the said machine breaks down... I know that I used to get *no end* of fun -- when I worked at the U library typing in catalogue data -- *every time* I managed to type faster than the 'puter was able to process the data I was typing in (we're talking 1990 <g>). Every time it squeaked in protest, I congratulated myself, and glowed in self-satisfaction... :)
It's *not* just in UK...
----- Tamara P Duvall Lexington, Virginia, USA Formerly of Warsaw, Poland http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd/
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