In modern US stores, it's generally people paying with cash or check that "hold up the f*cking line" (paying with a credit or debit card is much faster).

That's a pretty interesting tidbit, thanks for sharing it.

In my country paying with a CC or a debit card is at least a 2 minutes dance and it gets awfully annoying for everybody on the queue.

One of the reasons why several months ago I moved on to buy stuff from local smaller stores that offer delivery at home and allow me make the order from their website -- no phone involved. And I am investing in local businesses, too, so it's a double win.

Back on topic, why exactly is paying with cash slower than with a CC? Very curious.

Most stores* have a point of sale machine where you either swipe the card or insert it into a slot for a few seconds, then tap a confirmation. You may be asked to tap a PIN (if using a debit card) or write your signature with a stylus (credit card), but I'm encountering this less and less often for small transactions. I suspect the companies involved have calculated that the extra time/processing isn't worth the potential savings from reducing fraud reimbursement on these small transactions.

Paying cash requires either the customer or the cashier to count out correct change, which generally takes longer than the above. Hand-writing a check takes even longer, though maybe partly because it is mostly elderly people doing it these days, and they tend to perform all activities more slowly (not that they can help it or that there's anything wrong with it).

*Small businesses sometimes still have older credit card machines that are a bit slower, but the number of these I encounter is fewer and fewer.

I understand. Basically your banks and financial insurers upgraded their system, and the retail stores followed suit by modernizing their machines.

Not happening in my country. The general attitude one could extract from the glacial pace of upgrading around here is "well, it works right? why would we spend money on touching anything?". This, in addition to pretty experienced and fast cashiers leaves me with the opposite impression you described.

Back to Carlin's quote -- are the CCs really working against your interests (pun half-intended)? I heard about the mythical 18% extra on small purchases several times. Is that actually true? Are you actually gonna get $1.18 off of your CC if you buy something for $1.00?