Fragility
I encountered something today that demonstrated to me just how fragile the environment we've set up is. I went down to a Walgreens to buy some cold medicine. Just before I got there, the power blinked and came back - which forced all of their registers to reboot.
That brought sales to a screeching halt. I was thinking "why don't they just accept cash and keep paper records in the interim, and settle it all up later", but on the way home I realized the issue with that: I bet the registers were locked while they rebooted. So with the power out, they really were dead in the water.
Now, for a few minutes worth of downtime, that's nothing but a hassle. What if power went out for an extended period though? I wonder whether retail outfits have any kind of contingency plan for that kind of thing, or whether the plan is basically "pray that it doesn't happen"?
