Short Power Outage

[purplecat41877]

Yesterday, I was doing lottery for a customer when all of a sudden-the power went out. When it came back on about a minute later, I signed back onto the lottery terminal and continued with the lottery transaction. Since the registers at the service desk weren't back online yet, I let the customer know that I would give her the change as soon as the registers came back on. The registers came back on right around then so I was able to ring in the lottery amount and give the customer her change.

A few minutes later, a customer came up to the service desk wanting to buy a carton of cigarettes. I ended up having to take her in a register since both of the service desk registers once again restarted themselves.

[Scottya21]

Gah, not from NY are you?

The NY lottery's terminals run off a system where they don't store their programming locally. EVERY TIME they start up, they have to download the whole package from the central server or whatever. If you actually power off you system for any reason, it takes at least half an hour to be ready to go again. Or maybe we just have a crappy connection to the central thingy, but geeze....

[Mr. Rager!]

Power outages kind of suck... unless it's slow and you want to go home.

Try a power outage on Black Friday. That was wonderful...

[SteverinoNY]

Gah, not from NY are you?

The NY lottery's terminals run off a system where they don't store their programming locally. EVERY TIME they start up, they have to download the whole package from the central server or whatever. If you actually power off you system for any reason, it takes at least half an hour to be ready to go again. Or maybe we just have a crappy connection to the central thingy, but geeze....

I'm from NY too (where are ya from?) and it's not just that the person opening the lotto counter/machine has to wait half an hour for everything to compile, but they have to close it half an hour early because the damn reports take so long to print out (I'm not sure where you work, but in my grocery store, the office staff has to print the lottery reports and send them to the state lotto commission). So even though the service desk (where the machine is located) is open till 9, lotto closes at 830. Makes for many angry SC's and lotto junkies.

[Scottya21]

OT, but yeah... Actually, the NY lotto is getting a new short run online game sometime soon. $20 for one raffle ticket out of 1.5 million. I'm kinda looking forward to if that messes up things royally or whatnot. ^_^

[SuperDan]

The company that maintains our current register system was smart enough to install individual UPS units at every register. I believe it may even hold information in the register program through a computer restart too, but don't quote me on that one as I haven't had to do that myself. With the old system, even a one second power outage would restart every register, then it would be a good ten minutes for the register and software to restart (our current system is Dell slimline PCs using Microsoft Retail software, and it's less than two minutes from power-on to enter password). I remember a day when the power went out several times in rapid succession under the old system. The lines would be backed up out into the aisles not because we were that unusually busy, but because people would frequently have to wait 10 minutes to continue, and whoever was being checked out when the power did go out would have to re-ring everything. One particularly large order had to be almost completely re-rung three times, then management finally decided just to estimate the cost of the order to keep the customer from having to wait any longer and risk another outage.

Yes, management estimates orders like that in extreme circumstances. Our old location didn't have a backup generator, just a small handful of those little two-light emergency lights, and those were only one unit along each outside wall. During one power outage at our old location, the store manager and non-foods manager decided rather than close the store until power was restored, they would grab flashlights, open two registers with the drawer-pop key, and estimate orders for anyone shopping. While I'm sure it did make for some happy customers (I wouldn't want to wait a few hours for the power to get back on), I can only imagine the nightmare it created at the end of the quarter when it was time for inventory. Scanning items creates a nice record of product movement. A manager saying "Ok, it looks like you have about $60 in product in your cart" does not.

[Scottya21]

SuperDan:
Y'all couldn't have written it all done? sure it takes a while, but they'd have their record. Random thought. ^_^

Particularly because there are some items at my store that don't have Barcodes, so we have to write them down when we sell them. I offered to make barcodes for everything ( you can do it online...) but they refused.

[purplecat41877]

Actually, I'm not from New York. I'm from Pennsylvania.

[blas]

Oh my gosh.....whenever the satellite that ran the lotto machine got knocked out (for whatever reason), it caused so much drama, you'd think that someone got shot.

I know that sounds weird, a dish that runs the lotto machine, but I recall many a time during day shift when my manager had to call the satellite guy in to go up on the roof and try to fix it. Weirdly enough, ours wasn't the only one in town that would go down every once in a while.

If it happened during 2nd shift, I'd call my manager and she'd say "F it, they can go somewhere else." Maybe that's why I liked her so much. When people and their masses of scratch offs and Powerballs to validate would show up, I'd break it to them that the lotto machine was down.......and of course, they'd act as if I just took their firstborn child.

[AFpheonix]

My chain's database is satellite linked, so everytime there was a hiccup my system would go down. They hardwired us a year or so back so we don't go down nearly as often, but still it's a pain because I can't access the central server if I have a patient that's been to another location and I can't bill insurance.

Our in-store server went out once, too. As in it was pining for the fjords. That sucked, we couldn't process any prescriptions, couldn't sell anything, it was terrible. When it was replaced, we lost all our notes we had on insurance companies and stuff like that, and everything that was on the shelf ready to go beforehand went to sold status, so that was all kinds of fun finding stuff for about a week after.

We had a 30 second power outage a few storms ago, long enough to reset everything. God, what a pain that was. It also took us a long time to figure out that although the computers and phones and everything else turned on right away as soon as power was restored, the scanners attached to the workstations did not, and prevented any of the workstations from coming up properly. Of course, a whole bunch of people dropped off scripts right about then... >.<
Hello...giant windstorm, the road's closed just past us....don'tcha think this could wait 12 hours? Jeebus people, go home!