5 Lessons From the Target Tech Outage

Apparently if you were shopping at Target yesterday, you got to experience what a tech outage looks like.  The news began reporting a "chaotic nationwide tech outage" at Target stores in the early afternoon.  There was much discussion about said outage on social media.  Eventually the situation was resolved and all became well again.  What can we learn from this?

1. Bring cash.  People can demand that the cashiers take the credit cards all they want but when all of the technology that goes into taking credit cards goes down, there is literally nothing cashiers can do to take credit cards.
2. Keep your cool.  Getting huffy and screaming at cashiers/management won't make the tech failure suddenly fix itself.  People who throw tantrums in public places look like fools. 
3. With adequate stockpiling of necessary items and storage of said items, there should be no reason you ABSOLUTELY have to have anything at Target this very minute.  In the case of buying needed medications at their pharmacy when the system goes down, research ahead of time to find out what other pharmacies in your community you could use as a back-up and secondary back-up.
4. Is it me or is it everyone?  There are generally a couple simple ways to determine what is happening with any given situation.  Hop online and check social media (this is usually where first reports of such incidents occur) then Google (name of store) and (situation).  With a bit of extra information you can determine your next course of action (leave the store and come back later, wait for a while in the store, and even ask for coupons as were handed out at Target for $5 and $10 off future visits).
5. Imagine what would happen if not only this one Target-specific tech outage hit every store nationwide but if all of the technology systems went down nationwide.  Electricity, stopped working.  Water systems, stopped working.  Walmart, stopped working.  Grocery stores, stopped working. Et al.  Then you would have a problem (but hopefully not as big a problem as the rest of the masses since you have been preparing and practicing and planning for such an incident for ages).