In early January, the McDonald’s located on Harvester Road started having severe network problems. When they went to use the system to take orders, their screens would freeze, losing all of the data they just entered. This made it almost impossible to successfully take orders, which resulted in having to turn away customers.
“It was so difficult for the longest time,” junior Jacob Foster, an employee of one year said. “It felt impossible to get anything done.”
The systems would go down multiple times a day, and the shut down would last anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour at most. There were times where employees could do nothing but just wait for the systems to come back online, hoping they didn’t lose all of their progress.
They often had to resort to using the backup system, but even that started failing them. Managers called ATOS, the company that monitors the systems, to see what was going on and if there was a solution for it. ATOS remotely connected to their screens and searched the hardware to find out where the problem was occurring, but even then there wasn’t a solid answer.
“”When some of our monitors go out, it can get kinda stressful,” junior Brock Pulley said. “The work environment gets heated and aggravating, which makes the day worse.”
Because of having to turn customers away, the location started losing money from the extreme dip in business. Frequent customers were getting upset, along with the general public, since this had been going on for days now. Employees had to deal with more angry customers than normal, which only added to the already heightened stress they were experiencing.
“I feel that it is very unfortunate,” Pulley said. “We have to double check the orders and have to manually print receipts, which is time consuming.”
