Sorry for the Inconvenience

by PkWynn on February 24, 2010

Ever had dreams that you’d wish would come true someday?  One of my reoccurring dreams over the past few years was that one day I’d be working at the grocery store and everything stopped working. We would have to close the store and get a few extra days off until the problem is resolved. Not the most exciting hopeful dream but for whatever reason it’s something I’ve been longing.

Well last night around 8 PM, all of the registers stopped working.  They just shut down.  We tried restarting our registers and nothing. We called our tech support and they couldn’t come up with a solution and told us they would call us back. Call us back!? There’s like 35 people waiting in line with cartful of groceries!

We had to act quick because the customers were getting very anxious. So I made an announcement on the intercom…

Attention shoppers, all of our registers are down and we are unable to do any transactions. We are working towards a solution. Sorry for the inconvenience.

A customer comes up to the customer service booth with a dog toy and said he was in a hurry and that he needed to buy it. We told him we can’t ring anything up but he said he really needed it and tore off the scan bar and gave us cash for it.

5 minutes go by and tech support hasn’t called us back. So I made another announcement…

Attention shoppers, we appreciate your patience but we do not know when the registers will be up and running. Thank you for waiting but if you cannot uh sorry.

My manager who was by me said, Maybe you should have written that down. Would have been a lot smoother.

Customers started leaving their cartful of items and walking out the door. Customers waiting at the pharmacy were unable to get their prescriptions filled. We turned away customers entering the store. This wasn’t what I envisioned but it was soon becoming a reality.

Checker’s Christopher and Andy were ready to go home as I can see with the grin on their faces and poor courtesy clerk Johnny J was shaking his head. Shaking his head because he just inherited the job of putting the cartful of groceries back to the shelves.

Finally tech support calls back and they told me to check the connections with our servers in the office. Everything seemed fine until I noticed something unplugged. I plugged the connection back in and BAM! Everything started working again.

The grins of Christopher and Andy were turned upside down. Thanks for plugging it back in! They must have had the same dreams I’ve had. We ended up closing the store at regular hours which is midnight. Last I saw Johhny J, he was still putting groceries back to the shelves.

Tagged as: inconvenience

  • http://minyards7.blogspot.com Alicia

    Oh wow! I wonder how it got unplugged in the first place. Is there a sign back there now that says, “Don’t touch this cord.”

  • http://www.secretstorytime.blogspot.com Secretia

    Unplugged to the rescue again! That is my favorite fix for things!

    Secretia

  • Paul

    I had this happen at 8:45 in the morning one day. Everything just shut down for no reason at all. I was the only manager on duty. It would have been awesome if it was just a plug, but we had to manually reboot every checkstand one at a time. Worst morning ever

  • http://msjstar1275.blogspot.com/ JStar

    OMG…I KNOW that was a nightmare….I have worked retail before during the Christmas holiday…I can only imagine something like that happening…How angry customers can get

  • http://joanne-eatswellwithothers.blogspot.com Joanne

    I can’t tell whether this was a nightmare or a dream come true. Probably a combination of both? Insane. You never think stuff like that will actually happen in real life.

  • http://suzicate.wordpress.com suzicate

    Now that was a nightmare…maybe more for Andy and Christopher because they didn’t get to go home early!

  • http://yougoaheadandkeeponbelievingthat.blogspot.com/ Doc

    Wheeew! when I first read the title I thought it said incontinence.

  • http://realmendontwatchamericanidol.blogspot.com/ Christine

    I remember being at steak and shake or one of those sit down hamburger places and we had ordered and all of a sudden the registers went down. I though it was a little odd that they stopped cooking the food and told the customers they were closed. Seems to me you can’t take credit cards but anyone with a pencil and a paper can figure out the total and ring it in later. Apparently that never occurred to them or they weren’t allowed to do it.

    Obviously a supermarket is all about the paying part so that would not have been an option.

  • http://poyndexter-diarypics.blogspot.com Diane

    you did get a taste of that dream. Your announcement was kind of funny. Reminds me of going to the grocery store after hurricane Ike – power was unreliable and sometimes it just went off and the stores would have to reboot while they came back online with their generators.

  • http://justin-difazzio.blogspot.com Viewtiful_Justin

    We had a tech geek cashier who used to screw with all of that stuff on a regular basis because he was just kind of an arrogant jerk. And then he’d “come to the rescue.” That is, until he got found out.

    We had to close early once.

    The bank closed early once when some demolition equipment in the next lot knocked down the power lines. It was awesome!

  • http://gropiusvseddie.blogspot.com Gropius

    That would have been a nightmare. People are so rude, even when they know it’s no one’s fault and there’s nothing to do but be patient. And to think, that dog REALLY needed a toy. So glad he was not inconvenienced.

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