Posts with tag: outageshift

Halfway through my shift, the lights flicker, and then bo^m—total blackout. No emergency lights, no announcements, just darkness and dead silence. We stood in the breakroom with our phones as flashlights until someone finally got the generator running.

No registers, no scanners, and no customers willing to leave. People were wandering with carts like it was a haunted maze. One guy even asked if he could check out “manually.”

Eventually, power came back on, but every system had to be reset. Printers froze, handhelds desynced, and it took another hour just to figure out who clocked in or out.

I’ll never forget the look on the team lead’s face when the deli lights flicked back on like a horror movie jump scare.