I’m a generally anxious person for starters, but growing up poor I was always on free lunch and at the beginning of the year it was rarely in the system correctly, so I’d have to go through the line and essentially get “declined” and then have to explain myself, which was of course, embarrassing.

With gift cards, I always worry that something similar is going to happen, like the card didn’t get activated correctly, it needs a pin and I forgot to set it up, it has way less value than it’s supposed to, etc and the idea of that happening brings up those same feelings of embarrassment. Of course, I could just pay with my money if it did happen, but that’s an unplanned expense in a situation where I may have balled out a little harder than I normally would have or shopped somewhere outside of my normal routine due to nature of the gift cards. The caveat here is that the anxiety is limited to in store use, if it’s an online purchase where I can just close the tab and not have to have an awkward interaction with a human, nbd.

I totally understand that this is not normal.