Saw Check Cashing Places pop up all over Cleveland 15 years ago in Black inner-city neighboorhoods. At the same time the banks were closing inner-city branches. Plus if you are on a fixed income and you need emergency cash you went to your credit cards then to your checking and paid the overdraft fees and after that to the payday loan places. It also happens to be that Check Cashing joints also are in high drug and crime areas and never in the burbs also known in local lingo as the the "Heights" in C-land.
Many of these locations cater to a Hispanic clientele, as banks that provide business checking accounts begin to require accounts, or service fees, from employees trying to cash paychecks. Illegal Hispanics do not have the documentation needed to open bank accounts, and there is an infrastructure of petty 'capitalism' that has grown up around charging enormous 'convenience fees' or other agios to cash what are perfectly good checks written by reputable people against provably adequate reserves. The fun practice of rolling over short-term loan balances at fixed percentage per rollover, borrowed from that classic American institution, loan-sharking, only adds to the exploitation of the underprivileged. If there are additional 'fees' or paperwork involved in this that are greater than what a couple of script kiddees could gin up in a development environment to run on a cheap PC, I don't know what they are ... other than legal machinery to enforce personal guarantees or fee and charge payments out the wazoo without recourse. If there is any particular risk of non-recovery in cashing these checks, I am not sure where it is supposed to be (as it is a trivial thing to go into even a rudimentary payment gateway and do an available-funds check).
Times have changed. When my father worked in the ACL's locomotive shop in Tampa, he was paid in coin until gold coins were forbidden; I do not know for certain, but I expect he was then paid in cash, until his death.
In the early fifties, when I worked in a general store, I was paid in cash--and when I worked in a drug store in Baton Rouge one summer I was paid in cash (67.5 cents per hour).
The last few years that I worked, I never even saw a check; my pay was depsoited directly into a credit union account--and my income now is so deposited. And, I pay credit card bills by direct payment.
Johnny
DeggestyTimes have changed. When my father worked in the ACL's locomotive shop in Tampa, he was paid in coin until gold coins were forbidden; I do not know for certain, but I expect he was then paid in cash, until his death. In the early fifties, when I worked in a general store, I was paid in cash--and when I worked in a drug store in Baton Rouge one summer I was paid in cash (67.5 cents per hour). The last few years that I worked, I never even saw a check; my pay was depsoited directly into a credit union account--and my income now is so deposited. And, I pay credit card bills by direct payment.
When I was a part of the team the created Chessie System's Baltimore Terminal Services Center in the late 1970's one of the job functions we had to plan for was distribution of pay checks every other Friday. BTSC would be the only distribution center for pay check for employees headquartered in Baltimore.
Pay checks could be distributed AFTER bank closings on Thursday - nominally 3 PM on Thursday. To do this a clerical position had to handle the disbursement of the checks which each employee had to sign or initial for. Those who could not write (and there were some in the category) had to have their 'mark' witnessed by two other persons.
Our planning for this happening dealt with having the company perform direct deposit so personnel would not have to be devoted to this activity. At that time the company would not do it so we had to designate a position to perform the function. Later on, after the formation of CSX, direct deposit became the company's prefered and then mandated method of payment.
Contract personnel were paid every other Friday except in New York where state law mandated payment weekly. Non-contract personnel at one time were paid on the 2nd and 17th of each month, later that was changed to the 1st of the month ONLY.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
It seems to me that college kids who in certain former working class neighborhoods (Like PGH South Side that was LTV Steel) which was raise the cost of living thru the expendsure of easy money vis via there credit cards. No more doller drafts, No more Jack and a beer for 3.00.No more breakfast for 4.00 Rent also went up as landlords turned old homes into a hive of student housing with students paying with mom and dads money to be cramed in spaces that are not for a rat at 2,000 dollers a semester. With the wear and tear by students who start partying on Thursday and break plumbing buy stuffing hygenic products down anciant and rental agenies who have no pride what was a place that kids played stickball and dad mowed the lawn and sat on the porch having a cold IC Light is now turned into a student slum. Sure the front of Carson street has new buildings but that is only the fasade of whats going on in the blocks behind it. Yes Transit Ridership is up but only due to students with free passes
If this post were expanded into a book, with only very rudimentary editing required, I think it would sell and become popular. Good eye, and not bad sarcasm.
Not to encourage off-topic posting, of course. But it does peripherally bear on why 'cash acceptance' on transit might be less critical in some circumstances...
What was being predicted in the 1970s of a cashless society in Popular Sceince mag. is now becoming true. Now about those monorails and moving sidewalks promised us in Popular Science mag.
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