For the self-conscious: Cashiers generally don't give a fuck about your declined card and probably see declined cards many times a day. It's not worth their time to judge you, is what I am saying. If anything, they are just as broke as you and are quietly sympathizing.

"What!? There should be plenty on there! This is a complete surprise to me!"

This is just the default face we have in the Midwest USA.

My face when my card is declined.

What's worse I find is self-checkout's (at least in the UK) require a member of staff to clear your failed payment. Like, there's no reason it couldn't just go back to "Try again", instead the light goes red, the single person who has already approved your over 18 purchases, your brought your own bag alert, etc. has to come back on their route of 40 self checkouts to check that you have in-fact not got enough money on your card, and then to stand next to you (or worse, bugger off to someone else) for you to try again or use a different card. Argh.

Aah shit... Gotta get down on my knees again....

White people in the office:

if you accept the offer for one month free of amazon prime with an order and then turn off you card so that it declines the order you get to keep the free month of amazon prime or until you mess with you payment options again.

the more you know!

Oh man, happened to me today. It only worked at different register on 6th attempt.

Edit: But only one of them was actually "Payment declined". That's because the terminal required me to remove the card and swipe it, which I got blocked at the bank, so it obviously declined. The rest of errors were "Terminal payment not accepted" and I have no idea what it meant by that.

"How me look?"

Young Todd Howard