Almost all bookstore use computers to keep track of their inventory and to sell books. We generally don’t think much about the computers until they stop working, and then we realize just how reliant we are on them. Last week I mistakenly updated my anti-virus software and found, almost immediately, that all three computers at the store had lost their network connectivity. Not being able to access the inventory or the cash register function of the computers certainly puts a crimp in the ability to sell books efficiently. I am known as the IT person for the store, so I set about to remedy the problem.
The problem with the store computers is they are all Windows-based and I honestly don’t know much about them or how to really fix them beyond the very handy Ctrl-Alt-Del to get a wayward program to stop and then reload it. When there is a catastrophic failure such as the one last week, things get a little more complicated. I called my bookstore software provider for tech support and was told that it was a Windows thing and not really covered. But the tech suggested turning off the computers and then turning them on again, which I had already done, twice.
As I labored in the back room scratching my increasingly aching head, I could hear customers at the register. When the computers are down, sales have to happen by hand. This is not a massive problem, it’s just a pain. Everything gets written down, including ISBNs, price, customer name, and payment type. Every time this happens I marvel at how stores did business without computers. So much to record and so many pieces of paper with sales info on them. I labored hard in the back to try 
to get the computers working again. I even tried Windows support and knew I was in over my head when this screen popped up. “Get help from a friend.” Was this the best advice I could get from Windows? I felt like I was in a game show and being told to use a lifeline. I started laughing at this. Then I just removed the anti-virus update.
Thankfully, the fix worked and things went back to how they’re supposed to be, and had many laughs along the way.
Hi Josie! Back in the day, before computers, we didn’t record nearly as much sales info as is recorded now. Working at my grandparents bookstore, we didn’t even write down the items sold! We just toted up the prices plus tax, on a paper receipt. If a customer wanted to pay with credit, 90% of the time, that meant they were paying with their store account, so we just wrote down their last name and the transaction amount for Granddaddy to record in the ledger. For the minuscule amount of times that customers paid with credit cards, we had a manual machine that used the card to imprint carbon forms. Come to think of it, I don’t even know why cards need raised numbers anymore, as there aren’t carbon forms to imprint! Sales by item and just in time replenishment weren’t really heard of at the local bookstore level — our sales were comprised of what people bought and our replenishment was my grandmother perusing PW for selections to carry (in addition to local school reading lists). Ah, simpler times!