I am going to preface this by saying that I am not the kind of person that has made themselves terribly familiar with the way credit cards work. Like I have an idea of how they work but I more or less mean determination of card numbers.
I was at work today, and one of the things you really get used to doing as an optician is taking contact orders at the absolute worst possible times. This time fortunately was during one of the longest follow up appointments we had seen in the office. However, after a long day I was a bit tired and ready to go home. The phone rang piercing through my staring contest with the trusty Windows 11 taskbar clock. I picked it up and I just was glad it wasnt a phone scammer asking me if I needed Viagra.
We ran through the order and as anyone who has worked in retail soon gets used to it came time to collect the card information.
The calling patient was ready so I just asked for that number to type into the reader. Before she said a single number I thought, "its gonna be {series of four numbers}
Well damnit it was. I finished out the transaction, processed the order and genuinely thought I had just precogged someone's credit card information. I dont believe in that stuff so I was a little flabberghasted at the whole thing. I was seriously staring right out the window for the next five minutes wondering how I even did that.
If youre unfamiliar with the way card numbers are determined like I was, you're likely wondering the same thing and are about to feel insanely silly for even thinking I jus miraculously guessed a random 4 number sequence like it was nothing.
Turns out, the first handful of card numbers (at least in the US) denote a bank, I also happened to share a bank with this person as I had the same four leading numbers on mine. I searched this up after this because there was no possible way I was prediciting peoples debit card numbers. Otherwise I would convince myself to go out to the forest and eat baby food. Though I will profess I was the smartest baby in the year 1998.
Anyhow, lesson learned, learn more about the world and you wont feel like an insane person quite as much as you did before. Or keep believing youre a precog because you just so happened to remember your debit card during a sleep deprived work moment.