Was it a Hack or Poor Testing?
Recently we went to a restaurant for a quick dessert (pick up only at the current time). Usually this restaurant is quite fast and we have our order and are out within a few minutes. This time, to minimize the number of people in the restaurant, only one person went in and the rest of us stayed in the car. For a little while we did not worry – it was a busy time and there was a line up at the drive through and quite a few cars in the parking lot. However, by the time we had been sitting for 20 minutes catching up on mail, reviewing calendars, and reading it began to seem like a long time. The lightening storm to the north was quite good to watch also so that passed some time.
Then we began to get text messages from the person inside.
When they came out, with the order in hand, we got the full story.
- Order was submitted at the counter (not via the machine) and a receipt with number obtained.
- Many other people were also waiting.
- Drive through orders were being run out to the two waiting spaces (which was probably an indication of problems).
- Then the trouble began.
- The orders were disappearing from the screen one by one.
- Then the entire screen went blank.
- Once that happened, no orders were filled.
- The person in the restaurant had to go back to the counter to get the order filled and eventually came out with it.
- Was it a one time Hack of the system?
- Was it some sort of bug?
- Was it the storm affecting the system – there was a lot of lightening?
We never found out but we did hear that there had been a similar problem a month earlier when another family member went to the restaurant to pick up supper. That seemed to be too coincidental so we suspect poor testing.
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Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash
