The Question:   Have you ever looked at something and said to yourself, "That's a silly way to do this or that."   or  "This design doesn't work very well."  or   "That's silly/dumb/etc.   Why don't they do that this way?"  

My First Time:   I was seven years old the first time I had such and experience.   In the rural,  Vermont town that I grew up in, I was in a small family-owned, hardware store with my dad.    He had selected three items and approached the cashier to pay for his purchase.  The clerk, the store owner's daughter, a girl about thirteen, pushed the appropriate keys on the cash register which added up the cost of the three items.  She said, "That will be $1.53, please."   My dad handed the girl two one-dollar bills, and she  hesitated figuring our how much change to give back.   My dad said, "The change is 47 cents."   The girl, looking sheepish, took the 47 cents out of the drawer and handed it to my dad.   As we walked out the door, I asked why that the cash register could add, but it couldn't subtract.  

Again, Again, and Again:   Since then, I've encountered dozens of things, situations, and ways of doing things that just didn't make sense.   For example, today, as I sat down to order another set of checks for my checking account, I ran into another silly oversight that has comes to my attention every time I pay my bills.   The check printing companies have fill-in-the-blanks for the date, for the dollar amount, and several other pieces of required information, but there is no place to write in the number of cents -- the  amount less than one dollar.  So I after I write in the number of cents, I have to draw a line under the number and then under the line write the number 100.   

Several Thousand Years:    I've done this with every check I ever written in my entire lifetime.   I'd guess that hundreds on million of people, perhaps billions,  have done likewise.   And you've likely done so, yourself.   This may seem silly and trivial, but if you added up the amount of time human have spent drawing lines and writing the number 100, and put all that time onto one package, it would probably add up to several thousand years.    

There Is Another Way:    The bank check oversight has inspired me to start adding sections to this website about the small things I find that could be otherwise, and that would provide benefits for all of us.  

As you've probably noticed, most of my websites, about fifty of them at this time, are about big things things I find that could be otherwise and that would provide benefits for all of us.    The section below,  Bank Check Design Update  is the first of the small issues to be added to one of my websites.  

Another reason for doing this is that when this page is uploaded to the Internet, it will indicate the date it was posted, and whose idea this was.   When the change shows up in the world of bank checks, I can stroke my ego and tell myself that I'm part of the solution and not part of the problem.   Today's date is August 4, 2009.   I invite you to ask and answer that question too --  I'm part of the solution or am I part of the problem? 

  .