The Boston Market Story

Y2K glitches wreak havoc

This story is embargoed until Y401(K)

©3001 The Associated Proust

   HACKENSACK, N.J. -- From New York to London and Tokyo, the Y2K computer bug did not stop New Year's revelers from using automated teller machines to withdraw extra cash on the first day of the new millennium.  But when machines in Hackensack began spewing coupons for a dollar off on two rotisserie chicken dinners at a nearby Boston Market instead of crisp new twenty dollar bills, some consumers knew they were in trouble.

   "And it isn't even the millennium," Edwin P. Reiter, an award winning headline writer, said from his cell in the Bergen County Jail, where he was taken after being arrested for grand theft numismatology after attempting to pass several counterfeit coupons at the Boston Market.  The Boston Market chain wasn't founded until 1987, asserted Acting First Deputy Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Charles "Y2Ken" Zisa, noting that the coupons had expired in 1900.

   Meanwhile, a consumer in London used his ATM card to get tuppence and instead received an invitation to a Tupperware party in Omaha, Nebraska, but when he attempted to purchase an airline ticket to go to the party his credit card was rejected as having expired a hundred years before, and in Austria several automated teller machines spewed  out Kurt Schilling rookie cards instead of hundred schilling notes.

   Three Britons were admitted to Worcestershire Hospital in England with injured feet when 20-pound notes from a local ATM fell and crushed their toes.  Authorities blamed the weight of the 20-pound notes on the Y2K related failure of the ATMs to differentiate between lead and currency.  The injured customers were treated with Worcestershire sauce and released.

AP ES - 01-01-00 0016EST