Blackouts and the Remarkable Cell Phone

When I walked into work on Thursday, I noticed the building seemed dark. Most of it is outdoors and there are skylights in the ceiling so I thought that maybe I was imagining the darkness. As I neared the registers I began to recognize that something was amiss. My boss seemed a little panicked and the regional manager approached me with the command to call Centerpoint Energy and find out when they were going to get the power back on.

I knew it! I could tell it was dark! Ok, I thought, no problem. I'll go look Centerpoint's phone number up on the internet...

No power= no internet. Hmm... plan B.

Phonebook? I thought. Nope. We are too modern to have a phonebook...but I searched the office anyway (in the dark) and found nothing.

How dependent we are upon electricity. In dispair I sank into a chair to think about another option.

One of my employees entered and I mentioned what I was trying to do and why I was sitting in the black office. Call 411, he suggested.

Good! However, the store phones were out too, oh electricity!...so I used my cell phone.

Tanya with Centerpoint told me that power had been accidentally cut to 500 of their other customers (though she didn't tell me why) and that it would return in about two hours.

Pleased that I had accomplished my mission, I informed the manager. She was very upset about the amount of time left without power and my excitement was dashed.

I hurried to the registers to find out what else I could do.

My boss told me to use a calculator, pen and paper to ring people up. "Write down everything and only accept cash or checks."

Where can I get a calculator? There are only two and both were in use.

With no time to run to a dollar store (and not knowing where one was), once again, my cell phone was needed. With only minor errors (like: accidentally erasing the total before I could read it -silly, over-sensitive touch screen...) I managed to move people out of the store at a decent pace. The competitiveness in me loved that I beat my cashiers and their calculators.

I can tell you, when the power came back on only 40 minutes later, we were about ready to dance and sing with joy! We all had a skip in our steps and smiles in our voices as we finished the day.

We still never recovered our internet and therefore were unable to sell or use customers' gift cards until the following day, but that seemed much less severe than our earlier problem.

Without my cell phone I would not have made it through the morning. Hooray for the marvelous invention!