Later, I handed the cashier two twenties and change was dispensed from a mechanical dispenser. Took ten seconds or so, plus or minus.
No, I don't use any of those shitty products you mention.
In what universe
No need to create more CO2 for the packaging and transport of groceries to your door if the supermarket is on your way from work anyway. Plus you get to pick the exact fruits and veggies you like yourself.
I assume you have a US viewpoint where grocery delivery is common but this is not a thing for consumers in Austria outside of the capital. It also costs extra so there's that.
Either you vastly exaggerate the time savings of card payments, or credit card machines in your community are more reliable than what we have here. Don't brag too hard about living in the future, however, because here we often have the option of self-checkout, which typically is faster than even looking at a cashier. (Unless one of the oldsters who annoy you so has wandered into that lane and now contemplates the scanner as if it were the cockpit of the Space Shuttle. In that case one might offer assistance? Most of our self checkouts take cash!)
The day will come when all purchases will require the approval of several more parties than the buyer and the seller. We will not enjoy that circumstance, so people wiser (and perhaps less hurried?) than you will use cash as long as we can.
But most seriously, cash payments enable tons of tax fraud, especially by business owners in the hospitality industry, making it unfair to those with jobs who pay nearly half their salary in tax, while Gastro owners will buy another Porsche or vacation home from the taxes they dodged thanks to cash payments.
I hope they ban cash, it's annoying, time wasting, environmentally unfortunately and makes life super easy for tax fraudsters to the detriment of those who have to pay their taxes fairly.
The privacy reason is some hypocritical bullshit, as those same people using exclusively cash, carry privacy invasive Apple/Android phones and constantly use spying services of Google, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Tinder, Snapchat, etc. The real "privacy" they're referring to means privacy from the taxman for their illicit financial gains, a.k.a. tax fraud. That's the real reason, and I hope it gets cracked down.