Before jumping into this, a caveat: I firmly believe that check cashing centers, in all their…read moreincarnations, are utterly evil. I would prefer that they vanish from the face of the planet. I owe it to my mama (passionately liberal anti-credit card, pro-credit union socialist-leaning lady that she is), who instilled in me an almost violent hatred for these companies that suck at the belly of poor America like a repulsive capitalist leech.
O-kay, and I think my point is made. Maybe take it easy on the coffee.
Anyway, there were a few years early in my bumbling, confused, nomadic twenties, in various dark and decrepit corners of various gigantic cities, when this leech, in some form or another, was a symbiotic part of my own life.
Being an aspiring anarchist writer/artist/tour de force, I naturally didn't have a bank account or proper identification - an idea that all sounds very bohemian and lovely, except that it only works when you live in the woods and communicate psychically with deer, or something.
So, without other options, I would join the grumbling Upton Sinclair-lovin' masses and dolefully part with my 2-10% of my paycheck every other week. Then I would go off with a depressingly small wad of bills in the pockets of my ragged Carhartts and supplement my paltry income with food that was abandoned on cafe tables or in dumpsters. Ah, the good old days of artistic poverty.
At any rate, I'm doing much better now, in terms of the societal constructs, and I avoid check cashing centers like the plague. They're depressing. And corrupt. And evil. I stay far, far away, unless, as recently transpired, I absolutely must enter the creepy emerald city of Ace Cash Express in order to pick up Moneygrams - which were not even for me, but rather for my dear friend who finds herself in a penniless, identification-less state so achingly similar to the one that routinely crushed my spirit for a few years that I felt I must assist.
I was happy (in some small way, like the hope left at the bottom of Pandora's Box) to find that the service here was prompt and the lady behind the bulletproof window was friendly, kind-eyed and jovial. God, when you're dealing with this level of human suffering, you'd better be.
Hence the three stars. I say, if the woman at the Oltorf Ace Cash Express can preserve some element of human goodness in the belly of the beast, there may be some hope left for all of us.