Checks

Really.

Checks are instruments of finance used by banks to shuffle pretend money around.

They are basically promises. When you write a check to someone, you are saying "I promise that, like, you can have this money. But I don't have it with me. Its at my bank. But if you take this check to your bank, your bank will talk to my bank, and my bank will give my money to your bank, and then your bank will give it to you." Awesome, right?

The other awesome thing about checks is that people actually believe this bullshit. It is great! You can go into any store in America, write a check, and walk out with a new refrigerator, TV set, car, or basically anything else you could want, all without working for it. That, my friends, is the beauty of America and American capitalism.

Well, at least it was, until a few years ago when this infernal machine called a computer was invented. It has basically ruined the system by allowing your mark ... I mean ... your payee, to instantaneously call up your bank and see if you really do have an account there and really do have enough money in that account. It is a tragedy, and largely responsible for the decline of America in the eyes of the world.

How checks are processed

In the old days, checks were processed by stone masons who carved out calculations on stone tablets. This took an awful long time, but since everyone was poor (basically, living in Undeveloped Countries, until like 1700 AD when Britain became the first Developed Country). So it was no big deal to bang out a few numbers a day into a piece of granite. Or marble. Or limestone. Or sandstone. Or dolomite. Or quartz. Or jade. Or volcanic pumice (careful). Or porphyritic andesite. Or vesicular basalt. Or plagiocase feldspar. Or tourmaline. Or any of the minor or major ferromagnesians.

Then, though, everyone got developed. At least some did. Most? A whole lot. You know, thousands. Maybe more than thousands. Like, a thousand and 57.

There were an awful lot of checks flying around. That is why paper was invented, so stone masons could be avoided. There's only so many numbers you can pound into a rock a day, they would shout. Then the boss, Randy, would shout back, "If you don't like it, you can go work somewhere else. Julie can do fifty rocks a day, and she has a club foot and three fingers on one hand." And they'd yell back "But Julie doesn't have to take her chisel to the stone fifteen times a day for sharpening like we do, because she is on third shift and we are on second shift, and the sharpener is not around during second shift." And Randy said "Why isn't he around on second shift? I thought he was." And Terry said "Well, Randy had an issue because his kids get out of school at 7:00 and he has to go pick them up because his wife is in class then, and the after-school program was closed down on Sundays and Mondays, so it was easier to just move him up a few hours." And Randy said "Well, we will have to see if we can work something out; maybe he can come in later, or one of you can learn how to sharpen stones or maybe we can hire someone else, part time, but for now, look. We need to have more stones churned out because otherwise those paper people down the valley will take all our business."

And eventually they did, and stonemasons were stuck with worthless tasks like building houses, and archways for beautiful ponds and book store cafes. Sad. A tragedy, which formed the basis of the Greek Theatre's unknown hero poet, Thessalonikus the Savant, whose play Auromindedededes won seven awards at the Athenian drama festival before Aeschylus came and swept everything, which everyone knows is not because his plays are good, but because he was in cahoots with the judges. Anyways.

Paper checks

Paper checks in the USA are empty promises, much like wedding vows, oaths of office and honor codes. They are a way that people scam each other out of goods and services. However, a small percentage of checks are actually valid and mean what they say. They contain a "routing number" and an "account number" of the person's bank and account respectively. They also contain information on the payee, the amount to be payed, double-entered as text and Arabic numerals for accuracy, and the name and address of the payer. Finally, they also contain a "signature", which is a form of marketing the promise to the payee.

Beyond paper

This paper form was fine for a few years. But then, something bad happened. Civilization moved past the Developed stage, and into the Batin stage. This meant that there was a vast explosion in the population, an exponential increase in demand for worthless consumer garbage, and a vast explosion in empty promises of payment. This meant that paper was no longer good enough.

This meant that checks must now go through an electronic cycle, involving various diabolic devices designed to open check envelopes, scan checks, print information on checks, and, most importantly, mangle and destroy checks beyond recognition.

These devices are manufactured by Unisys®, who charges vast sums of money (real money, not this check stuff), in order to buff the logo and vacuum dust out of the paper tray. The contracts they have with processing centers typically forbid the staff from doing anything to the machine that might make it work better, such as jiggling cables or removing dead rodents from the tesla coils inside the front panel.

Reader–sorter

The machines that typically sort and print on checks in their raw form are called "reader–sorters". They are broken up into several stages.

The first stage is the mangler. Its job is to hopelessly coil the check around rubber rollers, preventing the checks from moving farther down the track. A disposable BINSYS™ (proprietary, $8 each without twist-ties) under this section of the machine catches the waste. Unfortunately, a few checks make it through.

Then comes the Ripper. This section of the machine's primary goal is to rip the front and back edges of the checks into tiny shreds which will jam it inside the track, hopefully deep inside the machine where the operator will not be able to reach it. It also separates the mangled checks into batches and assigns a serial number to each check, so the ripper–verifier can properly determine that all checks have been "destroyed" or "lost".

Not really.

Unfortunately, again, machines are not perfect, and a few checks do make it past the mangler and the ripper. This brings us to the third section, the shredder. Its purpose is to slit the checks in half so the sequence numbers from previous stages will be totally useless, and so that the operators will have to piece them together with TAPESYS™ (proprietary, $6 a linear foot) and try to send them farther down the track. If the electric shock guard fails to deter the worker from fatigue and inebriation, there is one final section of the track that can try to catch the check.

This is the aptly named Destroyer. It first takes a complete digital picture of both sides of the check. This is later used by check analysts to determine how on earth a check got through the previous stages of mangling, ripping, and shredding without being decimated. Since the more checks that make it to this stage, the more work the operators have to do, it is very important to try to minimize the number of checks that get to this point.

Nevertheless, some do, and after being imaged they are passed through a series of small manglers, each of which has a small chance of crushing the check into an accordion shape. But since the check survived the first three stages, it is likely to be unusually strong and can probably pass through the manglers with ease.

Then it makes it to the "pocket". The pocket has spinning wheels of grinding teeth and metal blades protruding into it that attempt to vanquish the check once and for all. But again, any check that has made it this far is pretty strong. So, in fact, at least half the checks that make it to the Destroyer will finally wind up in the pockets, properly numbered and randomly thrown into batches they don't belong in.

The workers then have to send the checks through again, to take care of any check that was just faking strength, and to take down the stragglers.

When this is done, the checks are thrown into a disheveled pile, and some loosely-guessed figures totalling the supposed amounts of the checks are thrown on top. These figures usually come from a pet cat that is paid in kibbles n bits in order to walk around on a 10-key and generate pseudo-random numbers.

After that, the checks go to another reader–sorter, which has even more stages, and any check that is left over is congratulated, its hand is shaken, and it is sent back to its originating bank so the funds will be transferred.

Sadly, this may all come to an end soon, with the advent of credit cards, which are like superior versions of checks.

You are, in essence, telling someone when you give them a credit card that "Not only do I not have the money here with me, I don't even have it at my bank. However, in the future, I will have the money, somewhere, and I promise I'll get it to you!"

This is made possible by something called a credit card company, which is like a super bank, but much better, because it does not require any mannequins or tellers to run it. And it still makes money – without working!