I was at a bingo hall a few years ago when a fellow bingo enthusiast was hitting the button of her “TED” machine (an automated machine that keeps track of additional bingo cards) excessively. Leading me to believe that there was a problem with her machine or more likely her understanding of it. Usually you just wait for the number to appear on the screen of your machine and then gently, quietly, depress the button or touch the screen. Just once. Turns out she’s one of those people that think punishing the machine for it’s lack of good results is the way to make her win at bingo.
I can not tell you how much this hurts my brain. After about 5 minutes I wanted to take the machine and throw it against the wall. Another aggravated bingo player asked if there was something wrong and explained that you only needed to hit the button once. Thank you! Thank you! I wanted to kiss her. The offending/offended bingo player did not respond with, “oh my thank you. I didn’t realize I was doing it wrong.” Instead she grunted and toned it down to just 5 or 6 clicks per call. She realized she was being annoying but yet didn’t care. The whole rest of the bingo session was marred by dirty looks, sighing, aggravated, didn’t get the right number, toxic aroma of entitlement.
Fast forward to this week. I found myself in the exact same situation. Instead, I just picked up all my cards and relocated. It was the best decision I ever made.