Power Outage

[kokopuff3]

There was a power outage at my workplace tonight, for two hours, due to a brief storm we had pass through. The sad part is: for a restaurant that is only two and a half years old, there were no working emergency lights, and there was no batteries for the flashlight the store had. My co-workers and I spent the two hours chilling in the lobby, and laughing at the customers who decided that their priority in the midst of a storm and power outage was to get McDonald's.

[zombiequeen]

Sounds about right, I know that when my husband worked on the construction crew at Walmart, people would come in during power outages...and steal stuff. Employees were worse than customers though, because it was pitch-black in the store and there were no generators to power checkouts or the security thingers.

[It's me]

There was a power outage at my workplace tonight, for two hours, due to a brief storm we had pass through. The sad part is: for a restaurant that is only two and a half years old, there were no working emergency lights, and there was no batteries for the flashlight the store had. My co-workers and I spent the two hours chilling in the lobby, and laughing at the customers who decided that their priority in the midst of a storm and power outage was to get McDonald's.

Thunder and lightning hail storm FTW!!! It woke me up at about 2:00 am... had to go out on the porch to enjoy it.

Fortunately my power stayed on, but there were lines knocked down not too far away..... it never occured to me to round up a Mcburger at that time of night....

[zombiequeen]

power outages make them hungry?
"Well, there's nothing else to do except light candles and play board/card games...Forget that let's go to McDonalds!

[roothorick]

Sounds about right, I know that when my husband worked on the construction crew at Walmart, people would come in during power outages...and steal stuff. Employees were worse than customers though, because it was pitch-black in the store and there were no generators to power checkouts or the security thingers.

I have to laugh when I read stuff like this. It's standard practice for security cameras to be powered by their own cabling, and the power supply and DVR in the back office is invariably on a UPS. The lights may be out, but the cameras are still rolling...

[Mytical]

I can vouch for that. Even if the power goes out, the main generator catches fire, and everything else for 20 miles is out..the cameras where I work can run for 24 hours before going dead. It has it's own secondary power supply, dedicated JUST to it.

[zombiequeen]

Oh yeah the people did get caught...there was one employee that managed to walk out with a $300 car stereo, but got caught trying to steal a crappy little flashlight...they walked him out to his car and saw the stereo, and knew he stole it too, got fired on the spot and they ended up with the doors locked (the only time our walmart ever closes, during a power outage) and police standing by. Hubby was put on guard duty too because he was amazing and didn't steal anything...in fact he wanted a candybar and went to big top manager to see if he could buy it with the tills closed.
It's so funny how dumb people can be though when the power goes out.

[roothorick]

in fact he wanted a candybar and went to big top manager to see if he could buy it with the tills closed.

One of our registers is on a pretty beefy UPS. As in, the server UPS will peter out before this register will give up the ghost. We'd probably just run the transaction through that register right then and there, assuming he had cash (no cards, as that runs over the Internet, and our NIU isn't battery-backed). If I was on shift, I'd make sure the server UPS wasn't getting low first, just in case.

[underemployeed]

All our POS (Point of Sale) are on POS (Piece of Shit) UPSs, we lost power for 10 seconds, everything crashed.... they installed these ups systems and never bother to test them or the fact that the batterys do need replaced more than never. I mean even a crappy ups should be able to withstand a minute. I guess we even have a generator, but I just think the one manager is a jackass as where the hell is it and why isn't it ever tested.