Dr Saxe

How Hungry?

Tonight I wanted to pick up a few fresh vegetables and a pound of ground chuck for dinner. I had in mind making a batch of seasoned hamburgers and putting them on the grill with some skewered marinated vegetables. So I gathered up about $40 worth of planned groceries and a few impulse items (fresh baked Italian bread, a bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies, etc) and got in line to check out. The lines seemed awfully long for the middle of the week and I soon discovered why they were moving so slowly. The store’s credit card processing and check clearing computer terminals were not working. There was a hand printed sign at the end of the checkout counter warning all customers that the cashiers were only able to take cash for the purchase of groceries tonight and were not able to accept credit cards due to the computer malfunction.

Now, I had two $20 bills and it wasn’t that big a problem for me, but there were lots of people who didn’t realize they could not use their plastic cards and were abandoning their baskets and leaving the store. I felt bad for the store manager, but they were not handling this problem well. There should have been signs on the entrance doors plus announcements over the P.A. system to advise the customers of the problem and apologize for the gross inconvenience.

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