I work in a convenience store. We are part of a large national (actually international) chain.
A few years back we upgraded to a system where everything that gets delivered has to be scanned, and then the computer prints paperwork for both the store and the delivery driver.
Within 6 months we developed a major issue:
Twice a week we get in a large delivery, and scanning the items that must be verified before the drivers leave takes about 25 minutes. The drivers are only required to wait 35 minutes from the time they start to unload. But when you finished scanning the delivery and sent the report to be printed, it would be 12 minutes before it would print.
After some experimentation, I determined that this would only happen if the delivery arrived (and was completed) between midnight and 1:30am. The back office computer starts crunching the numbers for the day at about 11:59pm, and if someone tries to pay by credit card between then and 12:02 it can take nearly a minute to process. And many reports are unavailable between midnight and 1:30 with some sort of "processing that data, try again later" message.
I thought I'd found a bug in the software that meant you couldn't scan deliveries while the system was processing numbers.
So it falls to me to be the guy on the phone with Tech Support trying to nail down this issue.
We run down the troubleshooting checklist with the Tech Support system remotely accessing our computer, and then there was a long pause.
"Um, according to this that computer hasn't been rebooted in ... 28 months?"
"That sounds right, since we only reboot it when specifically directed to do so by you." (It even says that on the screen saver. Not just "Do Not Turn Off" but "Do Not Reboot Unless Directed To Do So By The Help Desk".)
"Um, ... okay, well I'm going to reboot it and we'll see if that helps on your next delivery."
It has worked fine ever since. And about once every six months it reboots as part of one of the periodic software updates.
A few years back we upgraded to a system where everything that gets delivered has to be scanned, and then the computer prints paperwork for both the store and the delivery driver.
Within 6 months we developed a major issue:
Twice a week we get in a large delivery, and scanning the items that must be verified before the drivers leave takes about 25 minutes. The drivers are only required to wait 35 minutes from the time they start to unload. But when you finished scanning the delivery and sent the report to be printed, it would be 12 minutes before it would print.
After some experimentation, I determined that this would only happen if the delivery arrived (and was completed) between midnight and 1:30am. The back office computer starts crunching the numbers for the day at about 11:59pm, and if someone tries to pay by credit card between then and 12:02 it can take nearly a minute to process. And many reports are unavailable between midnight and 1:30 with some sort of "processing that data, try again later" message.
I thought I'd found a bug in the software that meant you couldn't scan deliveries while the system was processing numbers.
So it falls to me to be the guy on the phone with Tech Support trying to nail down this issue.
We run down the troubleshooting checklist with the Tech Support system remotely accessing our computer, and then there was a long pause.
"Um, according to this that computer hasn't been rebooted in ... 28 months?"
"That sounds right, since we only reboot it when specifically directed to do so by you." (It even says that on the screen saver. Not just "Do Not Turn Off" but "Do Not Reboot Unless Directed To Do So By The Help Desk".)
"Um, ... okay, well I'm going to reboot it and we'll see if that helps on your next delivery."
It has worked fine ever since. And about once every six months it reboots as part of one of the periodic software updates.
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