[Image by Andrea Mohin/The New York Times]
Mister Jalopy on D+R points us to this NY Times piece about Faerman’s Cash Register Repair Shop in New York:
The hair dryer whines. Brian Faerman aims. Hot air blasts into a cash register that is about as old as he is, which is 46.
That is old enough for the cash register to have black-and-white numbers that go up and down, not a green, glowing electronic display. That is old enough to have rows of buttons — 10 for cents, 10 for dimes, 10 for dollars and 10 beyond that. So to ring up a $29.95 special, you have to press four separate buttons, one by one. This is the kind of machine that is slow. It is thoughtful. It is onomatopoeic. Ka-ching. But it is not ka-chinging the way it is supposed to. It is not ka-chinging at all. Hence the hair dryer.
“Steel holds cold,” he says. “Machines, they need to be warm to work.”
Where Cash Registers Go to Get Their ‘Ka-Ching’ Back
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