Let me begin this little tale with a lesson. You never truly know how much you rely on technology until it decides to abandon you.
Once upon a time when I was working at my job as a kiosk engraver (I engrave things at a kiosk, I don't engrave kiosks. I probably could though.) I was cheerfully helping a customer waste her money on engraving on some flutes for her son's wedding, that she probably didn't need. As I typed her name into our customer locator system when suddenly, a loud beeping noise began to emanate from the computer. It was as if the device had been on life support for a week and suddenly the heart monitor was proclaiming that the computer was no longer living and needed immediate medical attention if it was going to survive. I, as the loving caretaker of the patient, began to panic. No medical staff was rushing to make the beeping stop, so I calmly (or at least trying to be calm) told the customer that I would call her when the register had made a full recovery and take her money over the phone.
Thinking on my very technologically advanced toes, I quickly turned the computer off. Perhaps restarting it, like jump starting it's heart with those paddle things, would revive it. I was wrong. Halfway through rebooting itself, it froze and began to panic again. (performance issues? possibly). So once again I hit it with the shock panels and restarted the computer. This time it very confidently restarted! Congratulations computer!
Feeling rather triumphant, I began to ring up my customer again. But alas, the same tragedy befell my poor computer (who at this point I was beginning to curse at under my breath). So once again I hit it with a restart! This time I allowed it to rest for a good five minutes before I started it up again. When I did it hummed healthily and allowed me to close with no problems and get home right on schedule.
But that was Monday. Tuesday was another story.
I got a call from my manager at 1:30 informing me that she needed me to come in early because our sickly computer had died again, but she was trying to fix it. So after being stuck in traffic for an extra 20 minutes (doubling my normal commute time) I entered the store only to discover that the now not poor or pitiful computer, but the demon beast that can't seem to decide if it's life is worth living anymore, had finally passed on two hours earlier and refused to start again and thus making it impossible for us to make any real progress in our day. Attempting to keep our sales up we had to make people pay in cash or give us all their credit card information so we could charge them for their purchases when the dead carcass positioned on the register was replaced.
only turns out! the guy that was supposed to come in a replace the register "couldn't" today so he was going to come the next day! No one called to inform me, who was at that time working alone, or my absent assistant manager who is the acting manager because our actual manager quit.
So as summary, I'm ready to throw our computer out a window (there is in fact a window in our mall right next to Victoria's Secret that will be used as it's exit into a terrible death) and might bash my head against a corner if it doesn't get fixed by the time I work again.
And that's my life this week... goodie. My mom's also on her honey moon. Which is still awkward to me, but not nearly as weird as thinking of my actual parents together. And i made three and half dozen cookies today. yay.
the end
