Missing the point of sale

I recently bought some new cash registers for a client. Although I was only purchasing quite basic models I did enjoy checking out all the touch screen systems that where available. Plenty of feature packed units to help make a tedious and repetative job that little bit easier.

When it came time for me to pay for my purchases I was amazed to see that this business was using a DOS application from the early eighties to handle their own sales. What the fuck? In the middle of a showroom full of barcode scanners and touchscreens these people are using a twenty year old DOS program. They didn't even have their EFTPOS hooked up so they fucked up the transaction and had to give me a cash refund for the balance because they didn't know how to process a refund with the EFTPOS terminal.

Now, I can understand using an old program if it still meets your needs, no point spending money on unnecessary technology just for the sake of upgrading. But when you sell the bloody things and it takes you ten minutes to type in two serial numbers that you could have just selected from a list or scanned from a barcode I think it's time to put your trust in one of the solutions you are trying to sell.

This sort of things seems common, I know mechanics with shit cars and landscapers with dead lawns and if television commercials are anything to go by, and they probably aren't, there are plenty of hairdressers out there with fuggly hair. Maybe it's one of those forest for the trees things.