Automatic teller machine etiquette demands that you insert your card, punch in the access code, take your money and vacate your place on the starting grid.

Queuing patiently also is part of the required behavioural pattern, as long as the person in front of you doesn't take more than 30 seconds to conduct their transaction. Beyond that, foot shuffling, throat clearing, peering at your watch and audible indecent language is permitted.

There have been those occasions on which, I confess, on fronting the ATM I have suffered immediate and total mental meltdown - can't remember the PIN, can't remember my name without a furtive glance at my underwear.

"Here," I said to the cab driver last weekend as we cruised past my local - well, one of them - hotel which sports an ATM in the wall just outside its gaming lounge. This is a service thoughtfully provided for its patrons to allow them to more easily pillage their starving families' meagre resources and feed them into the gaping maw of the pokies.

I stood and waited as the punter in front, buttocks almost but not quite out of his trousers, pulled out $50 and shuffled back inside to feed the machines.

Then I stepped up to the machine, slammed in my card and punched the buttons. Once you hear the reassuring flucka-flucka-flucka of the notes being counted out by the little man who lives inside the machine, you know that all is well and that you are not about to suffer the indignity of the "insufficient funds" scenario.

So I stood, hand outstretched for the money like a beggar in the mall as the cab waited and the meter ticked over.

And I waited and waited. No money. After three minutes, I banged on the screen with my fist which, apart from causing slight contusions to my hand, had no effect. Yelling at it and demanding it surrender my $100 was equally unproductive.

Then a small message announcing that "Service was in progress" flashed on the screen. I didn't give a toss about the service. I wanted my hundred.

So I stomped into the gaming lounge, wading through the smoke and desperation, to be told by the bar staff that it was my problem, not theirs. The machine was operated by the ATM company. It was nothing to do with them. Obviously, I was supposed to feed my last few dollars into the pokies on the impossibly slim chance that I could win the hundred.

Purple faced, I went back outside and rang the number listed on the machine and after a minute or so a voice sounding decidedly sleep drugged answered. Several minutes later, he had ascertained that yes, there was a problem.

   "It's got a cash jam," he said.
   "I've got a cash shortage," I shrieked. "I want my money. Has it been deducted from my account?" I asked but I already knew the answer.
   "Yep," he said.

So I stood on the footpath, cashless, clutching my little plastic card in one hand and punching the ATM with the other while the meter ticked and the cab driver watched from behind his dark glasses.

I am currently involved in a process known as a disputed transaction which involves me filling out a form at my bank which then endeavours to extract the money from the ATM company and pass it on to me.

Why is it that I think that this process will be as long as it is exhaustive and that the ATM company will stall and procrastinate for months in the hope that I'll lose interest and just go away, allowing them to keep my hundred.

My mood was brightened, however, by the knowledge that over the weekend I had bought a television cabinet and a side table on which to place a lamp.

"Wonderful," I thought for I had tired of having to sit on the floor to watch television. More accurately, I had tired of falling asleep and waking up with my nose buried in the carpet and suffering glass shattering hay-fever for the rest of the night.

As arranged, the delivery men rang Tuesday morning to announce they were on their way so I drove over from the office to let them in. "Funny," I thought as I pulled up outside the apartment block. "No truck."

This was because they had decided that waiting five minutes for me to arrive was all too tiresome and left. Rage bubbling in my brain, I rang the store manager who found the errant truck and sent it back to my place.

The delivery lads seemed less than overjoyed at this turn of events and humped the cabinet wordlessly into the lounge and handed me a docket to sign.

   "The lamp stand," I said. "There was a lamp stand as well."
   "Oh yeah," said one delivery person. "That smashed. It fell over in the truck and sort of fell to pieces."
   "And...?" I inquired.
   "You'll have to get on to the store. We just do deliveries."