Power Outage!
Our town's Street Fest is going on about eight or so blocks from my house. I can hear the music loud and clear. Right now, there's something really fun and jazzy. I'm groovin'.
Today was a rather exciting day. Arrived at work with a big Starbucks latte (thankfully, as I was not able to make coffee at work) to a sign saying "Bank Closed Due to Power Outage." I about turned around and went home. Heh. But we had no power. Which meant no network, no computers, no phones, no nothing. No toilet flushing, either. The walk-up and drive-up windows are power operated (the walk-up has a switch to unlock the door, and the drive needs to suck in the tubes), so before the lobby opened, they literally could not do any business.
We did end up opening the lobby. It was almost a little scary, because while we *thought* the hold up alarm was working on an eight-hour backup generator (due to expire around 1 pm), our other security systems were down. No cameras, no other alarms. That's like a huge welcome to anyone that the bank downtown has no power! Anyway. Four of us had to stand outside the bank and greet the customers. For anyone trying to use the drive, we had to run their transaction inside to the tellers for them. Curbside service. We could only do deposits, though, because there was no way to track money going out.
It turned out to be a lot of fun. Especially going down to the safety deposit vault in the basement with the one working flashlight. We had donuts for the customers, and handed out pens and a little advertisement for our home equity loans (there's no hiding the fact it's a very sales-oriented corporation) to everyone. And we got to work outside all morning. Power went back on about 11, so it was work as usual after then. But it was an exciting morning!