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Bars and restaurants across Spain often have weird and wacky ways of communicating with their customers and just lately, the humble till receipt has thrown up a few surprises.

 

Just last week, a bill from a bar in Zamora went viral after one of its patrons posted the receipt showing some rather unusual charges: 20 cents for each time the waiter went to the table, and one euro for the privilege of using their cutlery.

 

In another bizarre event, one customer at a bar in Cordoba was shocked when he received his bill, not because of the price (which looks a bit steep to be fair), but because of the almost undecipherable charge on the receipt.

 

The customer of the pub in question had a few drinks and a bite to eat with his group. All appeared to be present and correct as he scanned his bill, which came to 33.40 euros: a few soft drinks, a couple of beers, some tapas and… ‘what a crap card machine’.

 

The patron didn’t have a clue what the cryptic message – in dodgy Spanish, ‘vaya mierfa de datafo’ – was supposed to mean. Was the owner or a staff member trying to communicate with him? Was it just a garbled computer glitch? Could the bar’s card machine really be that bad?

 

Completely baffled, the customer posted a copy of the receipt on Twitter and it went viral within a few hours, garnering several thousand likes and dozens of comments, most from people who were equally confused about the receipt’s message.

 

Nobody has even come close to figuring out the secret of Cordoba’s crappy card machine and it remains a secret to this day, but as one helpful Twitter user pointed out, at least there was no charge for it.

 

You might also like: Spanish bars limit how long customers can nurse a drink

 

Image: Twitter