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Dispatches from the Tenth Circle...

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  • Dispatches from the Tenth Circle...

    Sunday was a shitshow, as usual. P was complaining to anyone who would listen that "nobody wants to work Sundays anymore"...well DUH. We're shorthanded anyway and all the wackos come to shop on Sundays (I'll need to give up Sundays for at least the whole of next month, maybe longer if P is going to be the stupidvisor that day). So it's a vicious cycle: SCs are insane and we aren't given any support, so nobody wants to put up with the abuse which means we're shorthanded so SCs are insane, nobody wants to put up with...you get the picture.

    Yesterday, the network went down for a few hours. It started around 10:30 in the morning when a customer on SCO was having trouble using FruitPay. I know we occasionally have problems with tap-to-pay before, but she did it again in front of me and the error message I saw wasn't the usual one. I let P know that we're having trouble with card payments (we have signs that we can put on the registers to let customers know it's cash-only...of course he didn't put them up and told everyone to tell customers as they were cashing out). An order drops so I go to shop it...having trouble with the wifi. The order's thankfully small, so I quickly zip around the store, grab everything and bring it back so I can scan/stage like the wind in a place that I know I has some sort of a signal. Right as I finish everything, BOOM. The entire store network falls over.

    Registers can't process any card payments. The SCOs are having problems even dispensing cash change (that's odd).

    The pickup desktop goes blank. No internet. P is on the phone to the helpdesk so I tell him that I can't get internet either. P: "You need to open a helpdesk ticket, pickup has nothing to do with my registers." It's a NETWORK ISSUE. A separate ticket at this time isn't going to do any good until the network issue is fixed and I can't get through on the phone anyway; it seems to be a global problem across all stores to some degree. I start wrangling the perishables that everyone just left in carts and telling SCs that no they can't pay with a card at all, no we don't know when it'll be fixed, no we can't just let you have the groceries. RF (front end supervisor) actually snapped at someone "At least we have power and you can get food unlike part of North Carolina".

    Eventually someone figures out that we need to restart the store router, which means no transactions at all for about five minutes...good luck with that (the solution that a few of us came up with was to simply close all the registers for the time required, but apparently that's not allowed) Finally somehow it gets done.

    The network finally comes back up at about 2PM. My computer is still down. Amid P's protest while he's on the phone with the helpdesk (I guess he decided to call for my computer while I was helping everyone else, that or someone forced him to do something), I open the PC cabinet in my desk, unplug the network cable and wait 30 seconds to plug it back in. Then restart the computer. BINGO. As expected, the tech on the phone told him that my computer would only work once the network was back....and told him to do the exact steps I had just done.

    Any time someone tells me cash is going to go away (and/or comments on my carrying cash), I remind them that stuff like this can happen.
    "I am quite confident that I do exist."
    "Excuse me, I'm making perfect sense. You're just not keeping up." The Doctor

  • #2
    Indeed. Cash will still be around when the electrical/Internet grid is finally down for good, as it will be.
    Customers should always be served . . . to the nearest great white.

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    • #3
      I somehow continue to be surprised by the number of customers who rely on cards/phones to pay for everything...and then throw a royal fit when the service goes down (had one genius declare "I'm an IT professional and this shouldn't happen!" ). At times it makes me wonder what will happen when things are down for an extended period here (days instead of hours--I predict looting cuz some people will have no other way to get anything). My store did have a few old-school card imprint machines but someone got rid of them a few years ago...but would a card processor/bank even know what to do with the imprints?
      Last edited by Dreamstalker; 12-06-2022, 04:39 PM.
      "I am quite confident that I do exist."
      "Excuse me, I'm making perfect sense. You're just not keeping up." The Doctor

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      • #4
        Quoth Dreamstalker View Post
        ...but would a card processor/bank even know what to do with the imprints?
        My cards (a year or two old) are not embossed, so an imprinter would do diddly-squat...
        I am not an a**hole. I am a hemorrhoid. I irritate a**holes!
        Procrastination: Forward planning to insure there is something to do tomorrow.
        Derails threads faster than a pocket nuke.

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        • #5
          Some of my cards are embossed, some aren't. There should still be some manual method of processing cards...but if the entire system goes poof, nothing would be processed anyway.
          "I am quite confident that I do exist."
          "Excuse me, I'm making perfect sense. You're just not keeping up." The Doctor

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          • #6
            Cash will be around forever, or until the atomic war, after which we will use bottle caps for currency.
            "I don't have to be petty. The Universe does that for me."

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            • #7
              Bottle caps, can tabs, old scratch tickets (I guess face value on those would be whatever number is fully scratched off)...
              "I am quite confident that I do exist."
              "Excuse me, I'm making perfect sense. You're just not keeping up." The Doctor

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