Retail Watchers

veteran+ wrote: ↑June 17th, 2019, 8:05 am I was at the Mission Valley - San Diego store when this happened!

It was backed up a bit but management stepped in quickly and expedited things along pretty well.

Received FREE bags and $5.00 off purchase.

That store had some good and not-so-good managers, but in the last few years before I moved the store leadership really picked up. Glad to hear they handled it well.

Not directly related to this, but a number of years ago I was at a Costco store when the store experienced a power outage. This particular store had its front end operating on backup generators, so they were able to more or less just keep operating as normal. I assume they would also have their refrigeration on generator power in that case, as the loss of product could be quite costly.

I was at Target several months ago when their credit card system went down. It was late at night, but they said that they could only accept cash or Target gift cards.

Target has had credit card systems problems many times in the past.

Brian Lutz wrote: ↑June 19th, 2019, 6:44 am Not directly related to this, but a number of years ago I was at a Costco store when the store experienced a power outage. This particular store had its front end operating on backup generators, so they were able to more or less just keep operating as normal. I assume they would also have their refrigeration on generator power in that case, as the loss of product could be quite costly.

Similar experience with Smiths in Reno a year or two ago. Entire area had power out... store was open on back up generators; all registers worked as normal and limited lighting was on. Refrigeration was all working.

I forget if the gas station was open...

storewanderer wrote: ↑June 19th, 2019, 10:29 pm

Brian Lutz wrote: ↑June 19th, 2019, 6:44 am Not directly related to this, but a number of years ago I was at a Costco store when the store experienced a power outage. This particular store had its front end operating on backup generators, so they were able to more or less just keep operating as normal. I assume they would also have their refrigeration on generator power in that case, as the loss of product could be quite costly.

Similar experience with Smiths in Reno a year or two ago. Entire area had power out... store was open on back up generators; all registers worked as normal and limited lighting was on. Refrigeration was all working.

I forget if the gas station was open...

I once worked (briefly) at an independent supermarket that had backup generators. The only issue was that the store was mainly lit by mercury vapor lights and, on a night I was working during a windstorm, the brief power surge when switching sources managed to shut down ALL of the mercury vapor fixtures and it took several minutes for a limited number of these to come back on. The bakery and deli departments as well as some of the coolers at least had fluorescent lights that came back right away. But it sure was dark in there for a few minutes.

This was in the early 1990s and the store did not yet take credit cards, and debit was not widely used yet, but the store had just installed IBM 4683 registers which seemed to work uninterrupted.