utilities (power/water/telephone):
Say a disconnect period is 2 consecutive months of non-payment. A
customer pays his/her bill regularly but if the date isn't interpreted
properly the next time the system does a check for 'disconnect
candidates' it will not be able to find a single payment from a single
customer within a 2 consecutive months time period prior to 01/01/00
(1900).
Telephone... possibly a minor problem, but where I live, to disconnect
electric or water they have to send a guy in a truck to either close
the valve or pull the electric meter. If there is a glitch in the
systems of these utilities I think they will be caught before the crews
start disconnecting every customer.
banks:
Keeping in mind that banks routinely deactivate and -absorb- every
account that is over x years idle (commonly 2 yrs. but every one I have
come across has some variant of this), see how the above method applies
to this situation.
Not legal where I live. There are regularly large multi-page ads in the
local papers listing inactive/unclaimed accounts. I think they might get
suspicious when they send their entire account list to the paper.
vendors of perishables:
Shipments of perishable items (food/medicine) are refused by automated
systems that read the dates on the items as expired.
Admittedly, it's been a few years since I worked stock at Woolworth's, but
I think somebody might get the idea when an entire truckload of new stock
is rejected. My manager was always present at the loading dock when the
trucks came in.
payroll:
Employee doesn't have any hours during the 'new' pay period so no
paycheck is issued. Also paychecks are issued with wrong dates and such.
Clients aren't billed if there isn't anything in the billing period.
etc...
Possibly a problem with direct deposit, however more and more companies
are using payroll services. The payroll service used where I work is
Y2K ready, I would imagine (since that is their primary business) that
most payroll companies are handling this.
security access:
I'll use my company as an example. I have full access to the office
building between the hours of 7am - 7pm M-F by way of a keycard. If the
wrong year is being calculated then M-F can easily be Sat-Wed., etc...
Hmmm... I've never worked in a place that strict. I have 24-7 access to my
office. My accesses are recorded, but I think that somebody could figure
out that I really did not go in to work on Jan. 4 1900.
credit cards:
Accounts are deactived or non-existent.
Possibly a problem. I have to Visa cards with expiration dates of "02"
which worked fine for all my Christmas shopping.
One major problem I have with the whole Y2K thing are the assumptions that:
1) computer control everything and 2) people will blindly do whatever the
computer tells them to. With the exception of "reject this credit card",
I think these assumptions are false.