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Feb. 26th, 2010 01:45 amWhat an odd day... I spent a fourth of it and about half the time I've been awake today in a weird dead zone.
So I was helping out at the restaurant since my mother went out to Portland to pick up my grandmother and bring her home. Things were fine until about an hour in -- all of a sudden all the lottery machines went down, every single one of them. The terminal proclaimed that central was down which usually means it's out for the entire state too. Keno was down, all the poker machines were down, and we were understandably worried. Anyone in Oregon with a bar can tell you that a good amount of revenue comes from these lottery machines (and we're rather popular and bring in a good amount so we have the max number of machines) so every minute that they're down, we're losing money in commission.
We figure, it'll be back soon enough, right? Then our credit card machine refused to work. And the ATM as well. (This caused us a whole host of problems that I won't get into because it was rather upsetting and I just rather forget how horrible some customers can be.) And when I tried calling the customer service line for the credit card machine and it wouldn't go through, I started to get suspicious and even more worried. No calls to lottery worked either and neither did calling my own cell phone or my mother's.
At that point, we're thinking it's us and it's the phones. So I go and take out my cell phone. No signal. Serious, WTF was happening?
Half our customers left but the ones that stayed got absolutely plastered as they talked amongst each other and played pool. During that time, we also got several phone calls from other places in town and even one from a bar in Rufus who were all asking the same thing -- were the lottery machines down here, the ATM and if we had long distance. Eventually, I borrowed a customer's cell phone to call the phone company because it was getting pretty obvious it was probably a problem on their end.
I didn't even get to speak to a representative. They just had some automated message about how they're aware of the problem and that they'll be fixing it within 24 hours. Yeah, like that was going to help us. A whole day's worth of business crippled? How could that turn out well in any way? As it was, we were just really lucky no one else needed to pay by credit card after the lunch rush.
I really wish I knew what had happened. Especially since all T-mobile users didn't have service during this time as well... At least they didn't in our area because my mother was frantically calling us from Portland unsuccessfully but calling other people successfully. She even left voice messages! She almost never does that, and usually not more than one. It's almost funny now that it's over and I'm thinking back on it.
But anyway, it's not like T-mobile and CenturyLink (cell phone and land line respectively) have anything to do with each other. Or even the lottery machines -- those don't even run on the phone lines, it's completely separate. For all of them to go down at the same time and come back at the same time (6.5 hours after it went down -- way too long in my opinion) can not be a coincidence. And since I know next to nothing about how phones and the lottery work, I can't even come up with a plausible reason in my head.
*sigh* Oh well, today's over at least. And it wasn't that bad all in all -- once the lottery machines went back up, it was like a mass exodus from the bar over to the machines. It was like not having to play for six hours meant they had to play even more in the time they had left. In the end, people put in the amount of money I'd expect from a Friday or the weekend, not a Thursday. And our bar was uncommonly busy too. I guess without one vice, people just needed another to take its place. Me, I'm just sitting down and relaxing. I'm going to go get myself a bowl of that Samoas Ice Cream, crumble up some of the Samoas cookies into it and watch The Deep End. Right now, that sounds absolutely heavenly.
So I was helping out at the restaurant since my mother went out to Portland to pick up my grandmother and bring her home. Things were fine until about an hour in -- all of a sudden all the lottery machines went down, every single one of them. The terminal proclaimed that central was down which usually means it's out for the entire state too. Keno was down, all the poker machines were down, and we were understandably worried. Anyone in Oregon with a bar can tell you that a good amount of revenue comes from these lottery machines (and we're rather popular and bring in a good amount so we have the max number of machines) so every minute that they're down, we're losing money in commission.
We figure, it'll be back soon enough, right? Then our credit card machine refused to work. And the ATM as well. (This caused us a whole host of problems that I won't get into because it was rather upsetting and I just rather forget how horrible some customers can be.) And when I tried calling the customer service line for the credit card machine and it wouldn't go through, I started to get suspicious and even more worried. No calls to lottery worked either and neither did calling my own cell phone or my mother's.
At that point, we're thinking it's us and it's the phones. So I go and take out my cell phone. No signal. Serious, WTF was happening?
Half our customers left but the ones that stayed got absolutely plastered as they talked amongst each other and played pool. During that time, we also got several phone calls from other places in town and even one from a bar in Rufus who were all asking the same thing -- were the lottery machines down here, the ATM and if we had long distance. Eventually, I borrowed a customer's cell phone to call the phone company because it was getting pretty obvious it was probably a problem on their end.
I didn't even get to speak to a representative. They just had some automated message about how they're aware of the problem and that they'll be fixing it within 24 hours. Yeah, like that was going to help us. A whole day's worth of business crippled? How could that turn out well in any way? As it was, we were just really lucky no one else needed to pay by credit card after the lunch rush.
I really wish I knew what had happened. Especially since all T-mobile users didn't have service during this time as well... At least they didn't in our area because my mother was frantically calling us from Portland unsuccessfully but calling other people successfully. She even left voice messages! She almost never does that, and usually not more than one. It's almost funny now that it's over and I'm thinking back on it.
But anyway, it's not like T-mobile and CenturyLink (cell phone and land line respectively) have anything to do with each other. Or even the lottery machines -- those don't even run on the phone lines, it's completely separate. For all of them to go down at the same time and come back at the same time (6.5 hours after it went down -- way too long in my opinion) can not be a coincidence. And since I know next to nothing about how phones and the lottery work, I can't even come up with a plausible reason in my head.
*sigh* Oh well, today's over at least. And it wasn't that bad all in all -- once the lottery machines went back up, it was like a mass exodus from the bar over to the machines. It was like not having to play for six hours meant they had to play even more in the time they had left. In the end, people put in the amount of money I'd expect from a Friday or the weekend, not a Thursday. And our bar was uncommonly busy too. I guess without one vice, people just needed another to take its place. Me, I'm just sitting down and relaxing. I'm going to go get myself a bowl of that Samoas Ice Cream, crumble up some of the Samoas cookies into it and watch The Deep End. Right now, that sounds absolutely heavenly.
