The following is a true story:
A few months ago, I wrote my mother-in-law a check. A couple of
weeks later, it was returned to me with a letter from the bank
which said: "Instrument is not negotiable."
I had absolutely no idea what that meant, so I took it, with the
check to the bank. The teller had no idea, and neither did the
branch manager.
Finally, a young trainee said "Oh, I know! We went over this last
week in training." She then pointed out that a check is a
negotiable instrument if it has five things filled in: name,
numeric amount, written amount, signature, and date. In my haste
to pay my mother-in-law, I forgot to fill in the date on the
check.
For all you software developers who want to say "those banks are
so #!@@^* !$%*^", let's try to do a better job of explaining what
our software does first.