Visa-sheep

You’ve all seen them. The new Visa commercials. You know, the one where the guy is standing in a fast moving line going through a mall, and suddenly the line comes to a screeching halt, people drop the items they were looking at, a ceiling tile falls, and somewhere a sparrow crashes into a tree limb, all because the guy has pulled cash out of his pocket.

And there’s the one in the cafeteria. Apparently the machine is hungry. Everybody moves in perfect unison, a well-oiled corporate entity. Everyone knows what food they want, they know they have fifteen minutes to eat before returning to the grind, but… wait, someone’s not using the Visa card that’s been surgically grafted to their hand. The well-oiled machine blows a gasket, knife-fights break out, and the sparrow hits another tree limb. All because someone refuses to be a Visa-sheep.

What about the other commercial, where everyone is at the food court? People go from line to line, store to store, and all the lines are moving rapidly, the first line moves at a decent clip, but someone decides to pay with cash, so everyone, in a fit or disgust, moves to another line, after another line and another cash paying customer the mob is growing restless. They go to a final line where everything suddenly grinds to a standstill. Someone spills a tray, a baby begins to weep uncontrollably, and that same sparrow returns to the tree limb with an AK-47, all because someone else has decided to use cash. The tag line on this version of the commercial is the kicker. Fast food deserves fast money.

Somehow, somewhere along the line, we decided as a culture that we could wait in line at a movie theater for three months to see a two-hour film, but we can’t wait 28 seconds at an ATM. We’ll camp out for weeks to get concert tickets, but we get angry if the McDonald’s drive-thru takes more than forty-five seconds on our cheeseburger (to which we complain that the burger wasn’t fresh).

If you watch these commercials, you’ll see a group of people becoming steadily angrier and more annoyed because the other people aren’t going as fast as the ‘angry-annoyed’s are. There’s a technical term for this behavior: road rage. Trust me; it isn’t worth getting upset over because Jimmy doesn’t want to accrue airline miles for buying a Happy Meal.

If you think about it, Visa is sending a series of horrible messages with these commercials. For starters, Visa is saying that everyone should do the same thing at the same time. That’s tantamount to the schoolgirl a few years back who, on national television, said that everyone should have the same amount of stuff. The socialist dream.

Visa is also saying that cash carriers are now second class citizens and should be treated as such. We should be angry when someone doesn’t want to use their Visa card.

Visa is sending the message that waiting is bad. Let’s look at some issues where a person would be better served by waiting: 1. Having a family. 2. Buying a house.
3. Buying a car. 4.Gathering intelligence before going to war. 5. Automatically turning down the deal that would give you the world’s number one terrorist because of the terms of the agreement. 6. Using your Visa card for every single purchase you make.

So Visa wants everyone, everywhere, to use their Visa card at all times on all purchases, and they want you to get ticked if someone doesn’t play by the Visa rules. Way to go, Visa. That’s the American way.