On Credit or Debit

       I loathe this question.  
       It seems that with nearly everybody with a bank account these days having a hybrid debit/credit card, everybody and the ancestors of their extended family want to ask you “credit or debit?” as soon as they see plastic in your hand.
       While this may seem to be an inane rant, there actually is a reason behind it.  Credit cards are credit cards.  Debit cards are debit cards.  Debit/credit cards are debit cards that happen to be able to be charged through a major card company (most often Visa or MasterCard) to allow greater flexibility with merchants, online and off, who do not accept debit card networks at their point of sale.
       A debit/credit card is not a true credit card, and the money is (almost always) taken out of the very same checking account the debit card is linked to.  While a consumer who may be a member of a credit rewards program - one that hasn’t gone the way of the dodo for debit accounts - may have a preference, I’m sure they’d make it a point to instruct the cashier of such.  I know I certainly did until my bank (which shall remain nameless, but it may or may not bear a resemblance to W_lls F_rg_).  
       For the rest of us, we probably couldn’t care less.  I sure don’t.  And see, that’s not even why this question irks me, for the end consumer experience.. I simply respond with “whichever is easier” when faced with the question.
       No, it irks me from the merchant’s standpoint.
       Taking both debit and credit card options effectively cuts into the merchant’s profits by levying small fees to each transaction, usually, a percentage of the whole sale.  Debit card fees are significantly lower than credit card fees.  Which makes it painfully clear that, unless a merchant is a complete buffoon, they would much rather have you pay cash (ideal), then debit (still acceptable), and then finally credit (ouch).  
       Yet they still train their employees to ask “debit or credit.”
       I know you want me to say debit, fool, because you get more money.  It doesn’t make the slightest toss of a difference whether I enter my PIN number or sign a slip of paper (or digital pad), since it’s the same money coming out of the same account in the same amount either way.  
       I know you want me to say debit, because the funds are electronically transferred instantly and that makes your accounting process that much easier.
       I know you want me to say debit, because that’s one less piece of paper media you have to account for.
       Yet you still ask me whether I want to use debit or credit.  If you were smart, you would train your employees to just say “enter your PIN there,” and point at the pad, and only offer credit if the customer should ask.  That would be the smart thing to do.  Obviously, if the customer has a credit card, they would rather be forced to inform you of such.
       Which leads me to my sadistic project I have in the works.  The next time I get a credit card (which, the way things are going, will probably be sometime in April of 2041 after I’ve sold millions of books [ha!]), I fully intend to demand it be run as debit during the first purchase where a cashier asks me “credit or debit.”  
       After all, they offered it as a possibility, didn’t they?  I demand it be run as debit.  They shouldn’t have asked, otherwise.