Paperless?

I was in a store the other day, waiting to pay for an item, when the system crashed.  And it had been going so well up to that point.

Now for much of my early working life, paper seemed to be the most problematic of materials.  Paper dominated all our lives.  It had to be correctly filled in, passed around, then read, and finally stored for future use.  I have no idea how much of it I must have handled, but it's been a boatload, I can tell you.  So the idea of a paperless society is extremely appealing.  Unfortunately when the system breaks down we're in a lot of trouble. It's not just the loss of a piece of paper, but an entire store is unable to function.  Some link in the chain had been broken and transactions couldn't go through.  I was lucky in that my checker knew a phone way around the system, and as I was paying with a credit card she was able to reach the company and receive permission. Not so long ago our local supermarket broke it's connection somewhere.  All the tills locked and people had to abandon their shopping carts as nothing could go through.  Still need to work on that paperless society idea.