Thunderstorms had rolled through the region, knocking out power temporarily to some of the stores of this supermarket chain. So when a help desk technician got an emergency page from one store, he figured he knew how to handle it.
Turns out it was not that easy. "When I called the store, a somewhat dippy cashier answered the phone," he says. "The cash registers were all off-line, and when I gave her what I thought were simple instructions to restart the registers, she was having trouble understanding."
One summer evening, a thirteen-year-old came in while his parents were setting the table for supper. Quite surprisingly, he asked if he could help.