Leah Bowness
Staff Writer

The front half of Market Basket was at a standstill at 5:43pm Wednesday night as the tower that transmits debit, credits, and checks failed. Every register was malfunctioning and the customers were stopped.

It was a strange scene, because at the Westford Market Basket there is always somebody moving around, cash registers are always making the beeping sound of something being rung up or carts squeaking through the checkout area.

This unworldly silence only lasted a few moments as the customers erupted with questions that seemingly nobody had answers to. It was then discovered that the extremely important tower that processed many methods of payment was down.

What this meant was that the registers could only handle the cash orders, a rarity these days, and all others would have to be processed manually.

As word of the cash being the only thing to process through the register spread, the line at the ATM grew extremely long, people lining up to pay an extra $2.00 at the ATM to withdraw money. Those who refused to get cash or too frustrated to deal with the situation all together walked out leaving their carts full of groceries behind.

“When I heard the credits went down, I got to stand around watching for about ten minutes because Ken and Paige were too busy to give me something to do,” said Chris Cook a Market Basket cashier.

While customers coped with news that the system was only working on cash, the front end manager, Ken Mercer, and assistant manager Paige Askins developed a manual and time consuming system to get those who only had the debit, credit cards or checks to be able to still pay.

Anybody who paid in cash would continue normally throughout checkout. If the customer had to pay with debit cards, credit cards or check they were rung up by a cashier who then had to flash their light [a universal signal for help by manager] and call over Paige who had to print a special receipt.

The customer would then go stand in line to see Ken with the receipt if paying with credit or debit. The same would happen with those wishing to make a purchase via check but they went to the courtesy booth to get processed.

“When I got [back] up front there was a line of people at the bus teller [where Ken was standing],” said Cook.

The lines grew longer and patience of customers got shorter.

“It’s funny how dependant people are on all this technology…” an elderly women in line for groceries laughed as she paid with cash on register 14.

At 6:15 pm there were signs hung outside that at this time we could only accept cash despite the newly developed system by the managers, in order to speed things up. Unfortunately this had little effect as many took no notice of the sign whatsoever.

“This is crazy,” said Askins.

Paige was running from register to register until around 7:00pm when the number of customers in the store dropped and the number of registers was down to six open registers.

Luckily at 7:14pm the tower was working again and everything could again be processed at the registers normally.

Apparently Market Basket was not the only store that relied on the tower
for debit and credit cards.

“I stopped at Tedeschi on the way home and they had their debits and credits down for an hour and a half too!” said Cook.

Anybody that paid in cash had no problem paying during this mini-crisis, but those that didn’t were left in a panic.