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“Hi, sorry, just a moment,” Hannah said to the next person who stepped up. Luckily they were a regular customer. “We need to restart our system, but I can get your order started. What would you like?”
“Just a crab roll and chips, please.”
Hannah scribbled it down and went to the window to hand it to Willis. He picked up the ticket and raised his eyebrow.
“System’s restarting,” Hannah said. “So we’re going old school.”
“That computer system.” Willis took the ticket and shook his head. “Sometimes technology is more trouble than it’s worth. And yes, I know I sound old because I am.”
Hannah snorted and went back out to check on the system. It was taking its sweet time rebooting and the line was growing.
“I’ll take the next person in line,” Hannah said. A tourist came up to the counter. “What can I get you?”
“I’ll take a BLT, no tomato, and fries,” the man said.
Hannah held in a snort. Her dad was going to get a kick out of this. Was this a new trend? “Gotcha. Our system is rebooting so I’ll ring you up officially once it’s back up again.”
She scribbled down the order and passed it along to Willis, who looked at the ticket and sighed heavily. Hannah grinned despite the growing line and went back to the computer system. Finally, it was all the way back up again.
She rang up the regular customer with the crab roll and chips, which the system handled with ease. But then, it froze up when she tried to plug in the fact that the customer didn’t want tomato. She poked it once. Then again. That got it moving, but when she put in the chip, it skipped back to the beginning of the transaction like nothing had happened.
“Let me try the chip again,” Hannah said to the visibly annoyed customer in front of her. “Super sorry about this. Our system is glitchy for some reason.”
She inserted the customer’s card and prayed it would go through. But instead, she got an error message and the register let out a sad boop. Great.
“Do you happen to have cash?” Hannah asked, even though she knew the answer. Most people didn’t these days. The customer confirmed it when she shook her head. “I’m so sorry for the inconvenience. Our system is down and we can’t take cards at the moment. Since your order is already in the works, it’s on the house. ”
The customers lined up all sighed and grumbled, and Hannah apologized again.
“What’s going on?” Willis called out from the window.
“The computer system is messed up even after I restarted it. There’s some error message I’ve never seen before.” Hannah pushed her bangs out of her face and grabbed her phone. “I guess I have to call customer service.”
Willis grumbled and came out from the kitchen. “No, they’ll leave you on hold for an hour. Can you run down to Sandy’s and ask if Luke can come take a look? Sandy said that he straightened out their system. I’ll handle everyone here.”
“Okay, sure.”
“Is anyone paying with cash?” Willis called out to the customers who were lingering.
Thankfully, one or two parties were. Hannah didn’t look back to see if they were the only ones. She jogged down to Sandy’s, the summer humidity making her sweat right away. Sandy’s was busy too, with customers milling around in the aisles. But luckily, Luke was there behind the front counter, working on the computer next to Daniel. Luke waved when he saw her.
“Hey, can I ask you a favor?” Hannah stopped in front of the counter, resting her hands on it and trying to catch her breath. “If you aren’t in the middle of something?”
“What’s up?”
“The register system at The Crab just went down. Can you help us look at it? It’s the middle of lunch rush and we can’t take any cards.”
Luke looked to Daniel, who nodded as if to say, go ahead.
“Yeah, of course,” Luke said.
“You’re a lifesaver, thank you!”
Hannah and Luke rushed back to The Crab, which now had a sign on the door that said, Cash Only—System is Down written in her father’s handwriting. Still, the place was packed with customers who had managed to get their orders in before the system went down or customers who paid with cash.
“Dad, we’re back,” Hannah said to Willis, who was in the back again. “I’ll hold down the fort in the front.”
“Thanks. A lot of people paid in cash and I’m getting their orders up as soon as I can,” Willis called back.
