My local iced coffee haunt recently offered me a punch card.

I declined - because I have at least 4, maybe 5 floating around various coat pockets and purses. That’s the thing about punch cards.

In the mid 1990’s when I was a young studio owner trying to figure out how to move my business out of my home and into a commercial space named “Tribeca Bodyworks” - I immediately landed on punch cards to track client’s attendance and purchases.

Someone advised me early on - not to give the clients the punch cards in case they lost them. I want to tell my coffee shop that but the sheer scale of coffee customers would make that impractical. Regardless, we took that advice and kept the cards in house, punching as they progressed and marking the dates.

Over time we moved to simpler cards that just listed the dates.
And then one day the word “software” entered our little studio lurching us away from our pen and paper schedule book and our simple class “cards”.

The truth is no matter how digital we become - there will always be a place for the punch card in our lives. It’s ubiquitous.

Now if I can just find my coffee shop one.