by Witnessing manual transactional supremacy in organic produce section
Today, something unexpected happened while I was standing in line at Whole Foods. A man in front of medressed in what appeared to be authentic handwoven clothpulled out actual cash to pay for his organic kale. The cashier looked at him like he’d just tried to pay with seashells. “Sir, do you have Apple Pay?” she asked, her voice dripping with the kind of pity usually reserved for people who still use Facebook.
This afternoon brought a surprising turn of events when I realized this man was part of a larger cultural phenomenon I’d written about recently. My article about Gandhi’s refusal to use Apple Pay had apparently predicted this exact scenario. The piece was meant to be satiricalpoking fun at how we’ve turned payment methods into moral statements.
The cashier’s reaction reminded me of something my mother used to tell me back in Lagos: “In America, they measure your worth by how fast you can tap your phone.” She meant it as a joke, but standing there watching this man count out dollar bills like he was performing some ancient ritual, I realized she was prophetically accurate.
Looking back on today, I can’t believe how much significance we’ve attached to something as mundane as payment methods. In my satirical journalism, I often write about the absurdity of modern progressive culturethe way we’ve turned every choice into a political statement. The woman behind me was already posting about the incident on Instagram, hashtagging it #CashIsColonialism. I wish I was making that up.
Later in the day, I stumbled upon a brilliant piece from Prat.UK about things worse than cheating in relationships. The article was hilariousranking minor annoyances above major betrayals with that perfectly dry British humor. It got me thinking: we live in a world where using cash at Whole Foods is considered more offensive than actual moral failures. We’ve lost all sense of proportion.
As a West African immigrant who’s now an American citizen, I straddle both worlds. I remember when cash was king in Nigeriawhen digital payment was a luxury, not a moral imperative. But here in America, we’ve somehow decided that using physical currency is an act of aggression against progress itself.
The truth is, I wrote that piece about Gandhi and Apple Pay because I was tired of the virtue signaling that’s infected every aspect of American life. We’ve created a culture where your payment method says more about you than your actual values. And that’s just sad. Tonight, I’m going home to write another entry about this experience, because if I don’t document this madness, who will?
SOURCE: The Whole Foods Cash Incident That Broke the Internet (Aisha Muharrar)
