Oct 03 2008
No More Beeping, Please!
It occurs to me that we have come to rely far, far too much on the conveniences offered by modern technology, to the extent that we become paralyzed when that technology fails. Case in point? For the past two days the phone lines have been down at work. No calls coming in, no calls going out, no faxes, and of course, no connection to the credit card server. (Before anyone gets any silly ideas, the security alarm is still working fine - we checked).
Yesterday we managed alright, as we had the kch-kch credit card swiper. It meant every transaction took longer, but we got through it. This morning as I was opening the store I realized that we only had three credit card slips left. Once they, we couldn’t accept credit cards at all, and that made it harder. I put up signs on the door and counter, but of course people don’t read, so I ended up having to hang out way in front and tell every person as they came in, “Just so you know, our phone lines are down so we can’t accept credit cards.”
You’d be surprised how many people assumed that 1) it was all our fault “What, can’t you pay your phone bill?” and 2) we weren’t fixing it.
I went to Staples to get more credit card slips, but — surprise, surprise — they don’t sell such antiquated technology anymore. We ended up having to borrow some from another store in order to last out the day. Meanwhile, the phone company wouldn’t even tell us if they were working on the problem or when it would be fixed, so we have no idea if anything will be fixed tomorrow (Saturday, busiest day of the week). Conveniently enough we’re scheduled to switch to a different company on Monday, so that should be the very latest we’d have to deal with this issue. But still… processing four days worth of credit card transactions is going to be no fun whatsoever.
