Yesterday afternoon I was putting my signature in the box on the credit card reader at the hardware store. Just as I poked the "Ok" box on the small screen the power went out in the store.
I had to hang around in the dark for about 20 minutes because the store couldn't figure out whether the transaction had gone through or not -- and there was no way to check. They had no backup generators or protocol for dealing with transactions in process during a blackout -- even though power loses seem to happen on an average of once a week.
Eventually, the clerk accepted my phone number and agreed that she could call me if they eventually figured out the transaction hadn't processed. (About an hour later the call came and this morning I went back to do the whole transaction over again.)
During the blackout most of the other customers in the warehouse-style store just stood around waiting -- assuming that the power would be back in a minute or two or three or more. No difference -- time isn't all that important anyway.
The thing is that no one got rattled or was in a particular hurry to find a solution. It was just another day on Guam. And in spite of all the inefficiency, it's not all that bad.
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