And Cash Saves the Day Again

My first son had his sixteenth birthday last week and he wanted to go paintballing with his friends on the weekend. So after a Saturday night of Average beer drinking (about ten) while playing dominoes with my neighbors I finally passed out at four in the am. Got up later that Sunday morning around 8:22 to get things together for some nice recreational paintball with my eldest and his second younger brother. We had a great few hours with his friends and their pops at the field and everyone is out by three pm.

I always love scarfing down a loaded fresh burrito after getting tagged with paint while running like a maniac through the woods. So I pull into the Chipotle close to MOSI because the one by the mall is always so crowded from the USF students down the block. Now, I spent over $100 bucks at the field with my boys and always pay cash so they have enough cash to pay their referees and the end of the day. When I walked into the store I only had $17 left in cash. I was actually going to cover the meal with a tap pay credit card just because I am having a day out with my boys and want to finish it off in peace.

They tell me it has to be cash or app order because their cc machine is acting a fool. No problem my son brought his own money which was just exactly enough to cover everything with what I had left. They putting it all together and our three orders are complete while they are building the orders for the folks behind us. I get up to the register and now their entire POS is unresponsive. The whoever is in charge is non the phone trying to troubleshoot with whoever was on the other side. Cashier is saying she cannot give me nothing yet because she has to wait for an answer.

I'm like hey just write it down the old fashioned way and tender it all the up after it's fixed. She does proceed to write it down but I'm still a filthy animal from my romp at the field so I am like "brb gotta wash up" while they are figuring things out. I get back and things are just worse. Line is all backed up, very little communication is even happening between staff and customers. I'm starving my ass off and lose my patience.
I say as much "look here is 43$ there is going to be a couple extra bucks left just throw it in your tip jar my kids and I are going to eat right now" and just grab the food and sit down. So it is not me holding nothing up.

Finally they tell folks what the deal is and most of them walk out despite already having meals made on the line. As new patrons stream in they are advised to order in the app. Now everyone is in their phones, waiting on a haphazard operation building orders in a smaller space not designed to accommodate such a volume of online orders from their walk in customers.

For the 20+ minute duration of our visit, in a store with at least 17-25 people we are the only ones with any food eating anything in the store. Everyone else is staring at the phones looking hungry and not happy. I helped my ten year old with his word search book between bites. We left highly satisfied with our yummy awesome meals while so many others just wait obliviously.

Paid my son (16) back with an extra fiver when we got home for saving the day. It was such a sad and pitiful sight the number of folks not carrying cash. I made sure to loudly make that point to my oldest son while we were the only ones enjoying our meal with delight.

Chipotle really should teach their leads how to do a hard reboot of their POS as nine times out of ten it will resolve the problem once it reconnects to their network and then glitches work themselves out. Works at my job all the time.

I would love to hear other folks's cash saves the day stories because interestingly enough, I am finding similar (but not same) stories becoming increasingly more common.

a reply to: worldstarcountry

I always carry cash in case of scenarios like yours.

Whenever I leave the house, I always make sure to carry at least a twenty as that should cover anything I might suddenly need whilst I'm out.

Tbh, I want to stop using cards for payments. Card transactions only encourage CBDC.

a reply to: worldstarcountry

I always carry $100 in cash , just in case. It's enough for some groceries and gas should the need arise.

a reply to: worldstarcountry

We should all stash some cash.

Always carry cash, who wants guns, ammo, alcohol, or female companionship to show up on a bank card?

Yes I pretty much pay for everything with cash exclusively. I just happened to forget to budget for the lunch after the field so I was short twenty bucks. I'm glad my son has been listening to me about to evils of micro fees and how they only make the global financial cabal more powerful.

Much of industrialized civilization, including food shipped across thousands of miles and involving extensive supply chains, involves not cash but credit, and much of that consists of numbers in hard drives.