January 3, 2011 11:01 p.m.

Would you ever hand your credit card over to a virtual stranger and allow them to walk off with it out of your sight?  It sounds crazy, I know, but many of us do it routinely when we use our credit card at a restaurant.  We hand over our card to the server, and the server takes our card out of the dining room, to another room, sometimes for several minutes.

Last week our family went dining out to a local BBQ restaurant.  I paid, as usual, with my Discover card, placing the card into the folder and handing it off to our server as I have done so many times before.

The next morning, Sweet Girl and I went to our local post office to stock up on stamps.  I reached into my wallet for my credit card --- and it wasn’t there.  My smile disappeared as well, as I hastily reached into the other part of my wallet to hand cash over to the postal clerk. I didn’t mention at the time that I was missing a credit card, and pondered it on the drive home.

When I got back in the house I announced to Self-Reliant Man that I didn’t think the waitress ever gave our card back to us last night.  I immediately headed to the computer to check Discover.com to see if there had been any unauthorized charges placed on my account.  I realized that I had to input my card number to access my account (and I didn’t have this due to my card being missing) so I set out to get my husband’s card.  As I was doing this, the phone rang.  It was Discover Fraud Protection Dept, calling at that moment to report unusual activity on my account.

It turned out that someone had tried to make a purchase at the Playstation.com website but it didn’t work out because the person had typed the wrong 3 digit number from the back of the card.  This attempted transaction was flagged by the Discover system and resulted in a phone call to me.  They cancelled my card immediately, and said that they would be issuing me a new one.

How about that?

So when the restaurant opened, I called them up to speak to the manager on duty and tell her what had happened.  I mentioned the name of the server, although it is possible that another person was responsible for the attempted purchase.  The manager looked inside the restaurant safe, and sure enough, my card was there.  This disturbed her, as now it really looked like one of her employees was the culprit (and not another customer).  After all, the server failed to return my card to me, and this coincided with the unauthorized use of the card.  She told me that it was the policy of the establishment for the servers to run the credit cards themselves.  This looked pretty bad for this server.  I told her the server had been especially pleasant, and even ran after us as we were going out the door to return Chips’ chapstick.  The manager told me she felt shocked and disappointed and that she would have to think long and hard about how to go about handling the problem.   She thanked me for notifying her, although in reality I had dumped a burden on her.  As far as I know, I am the first to call her about such a thing, but in reality this may not be true.  I told her that maybe she should sit tight for awhile and see if any further complaints come in before jumping to conclusions.

Anyway, another lesson learned.   Maybe restaurants should go back to the practice of having the customer stand at the cash register line.  Or maybe restaurants should use portable card scanners at the table.  Solve one technological liability with more technology, perhaps?

We certainly live in a different world than my parents did.  This is the second time an unauthorized charge came across my Discover card this year.  The first one was six months ago when I found a charge of $350 on my monthly bill – for an Amazon.com purchase.  It looked like it had been an inside job at Amazon, but really my number could have been acquired from a restaurant server.  Fortunately, I got that one resolved.  This time, I have to notify all the merchants and organizations that I have a new card number.  It is a pain.  But, I’ve got to wonder about folks who do this sort of thing; they really do need our prayers.  And I truly hope they get caught, and that nobody gets punished undeservedly.