Mar 1, 2010

Speaking of the Y2K bug...

Remember the Y2K “millenium bug” scare ten years ago?


Airplanes were supposed to fall out of the sky. Nuclear power plants were to melt down like the disaster in Chernobyl. People would freeze with no electricity.

Bottled water, flour, canned food, generators and even camping stoves flew off store shelves. Some people even stockpiled cans of gasoline in their garages.

Americans woke up to a New Year’s Day in 2000 that was not much different than any other. It had been much ado about nothing.

The sun even came up that morning! The doomsday alarmists had been wrong.

People who had stockpiled avoided eye contact with neighbors who had not.

Re-stocking fees provided a lucrative profit center for many stores as patrons returned unused generators and camping stoves.

The Y2K scare quickly faded like a distant memory.

During the next three months several free-lance computer programmers came to our office for tax preparation. Their income was much higher than previous years as businesses paid a premium to help prepare their computers for the dreaded Y2K bug.