Thursday, March 31, 2005
Computer Created Oil Shortage
I’m just back from lunch and I had tried to kill two birds with one stone by dropping my car off for an oil change while I ate next door. I got the lunch but not the oil change. Seems the local Jiffy Lube can’t change my oil today because lightning fried their computer yesterday.
I remember when grocery stores first started to switch over to computer controlled inventories and UPC labeled goods only, computers where much more likely to go down hard during any kind of power interruption back then. Sometimes the stores would keep attempting to sell items, sometimes they wouldn’t (it might take them hours to get the central server tied registers back up). I haven’t seen this kind of No-Sales-Because-Computer-Down for over ten years now. But I must say not being able to just get a simple oil change because the cash register or home office server connection is down seems bizarre.
Jiffy Lube seemed to have the full crew of personnel on duty, and someone came out right away to inform me there would be no service, pressing a $5 coupon into my hand with an apology. I’m not mad or put out, just surprised at what would seem to be an overdependence on computers for so mundane a task. Couldn’t they just change the oil, write a receipt (if needed) by hand, and enter the sale later?
I’m sure others out there have true horror stories of computers being needed to do the most trivial of tasks and causing complete work stoppages when they go down. Maybe we can get a discussion thread going here.
