“I Stole This Card”

John Hargrave’s Credit Card Prank demonstrates just how little attention shop assistants and checkout operators pay to the signature on the credit card receipt they’ve just asked you to sign.

Next time I bought something that required a signature, I considered just creating a rectangle of solid black. Then I thought a grid might be weirder:

[Photo of receipt showing a hand-drawn grid where a signature should be]

Only the most Matrix-obsessed fanboy would actually use a grid for his signature, but the chick at the Cheesecake Factory didn’t look twice. I mean, I didn’t even have on a trenchcoat.

That was one of Hargrave’s earlier efforts:as the week progressed he got sillier and sillier: hieroglyphics, writing “I stole this card”, you name it, he tried it. It’s a funny piece, until you consider what it implies about the fate of your credit card balance should your card end up in the wrong hands.

[Via Krisalis]