YOUR card has been rejected. Here’s how to claw back some fiscal dignity in the ensuing blind panic. 

Declare your solvency 

Immediately inform everyone around that you are flush with cash. Interrupt the sales assistant trying to ask you to verify your card with your PIN by ranting about having ‘well over a thousand pounds’ in your account whilst hurriedly opening your banking app and showing anyone that cares your available funds. Which will be no one. 

Feign surprise 

It’s difficult to exhibit genuine surprise when you know your card might be declined anyway. Saying things like ‘Gosh! I didn’t expect that!’ is worth a go but unlikely to fool anyone, even if you say it as if you’d found a bigfoot at the bottom of your basket. 

Apportion blame 

This calls for instant obnoxiousness. Your declined card isn’t your fault, the machine must be faulty. Or the assistant processed the transaction incorrectly. How hard can it be? Question everything, then ask for the manager. There’s a good chance they’ll let you and your jar of harissa go, on the grounds that it’s worth it just to get rid of you. 

Take ‘Do you have another way to pay?’ literally 

If asked if you have another means to pay, say your partner works for a bank and can have government-backed gilts released immediately. Alternatively you can pay using a $20,000 Bitcoin or a Millennium Falcon in its original unopened box. When the confused assistant says that’s not appropriate for a Meal Deal, pompously tell them they need to get with the times. 

Become desperate 

Go to any lengths to get your Muller Rice multipack. Look the assistant in the eye and say ‘See anything you like?’ or ‘I know a guy who can get really good shit’. If neither of these work put your hand in your pocket with a finger simulating a gun barrel and say it’s a robbery. As the firearms squad surround Sainsbury’s and you start taking hostages you’ll quickly forget the embarrassment of your card being declined.