In Concord, California, a customer became enraged at an automated teller, and kept punching it because the machine refused to dispense $80 from the man’s account. The customer was arrested and charged with “malicious mischief.”

This is not an isolated incident. According to police reports, so many people were beating up on automated machines when they first appeared everywhere in the 1980’s that it became this nation’s most serious crime problem.

Does it make you mad? I’ve seen people livid with anger, pounding a payphone with their fist or kicking a coke machine mercilessly…at a truck stop once, waiting to use the telephone, I saw a man literally pull the receiver from the phone and throw it into the trash, because (when he couldn’t get his number), he didn’t get a coin return.

Now I s…