This may be old news already, but I didn't see a post on it.

http://www.jsonline.com/wi/9901222000bugareasonforstor.asp

2000 bug a reason for store's closure

CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis. (AP) -- Cheap Foods said its decision to close Friday was due in part to costs associated with the Year 2000 computer problem.

Costs to update the store's date-sensitive items and competition from larger grocers forced the shutdown, said Polly Deane, a spokeswoman for Super Valu, the company that owns Cheap Foods.

The Y2K problem is a glitch in which computers might interpret the year 2000 as 1900, because they are programmed to read only the last two digits of the year. Computers need to be Y2K-compliant to handle the switch in dates from 1999 to 2000.

"I think it was the two things in tandem," Deane said. "(Y2K) was one of the major reasons. It just didn't make economic sense to keep the store open."

Deane was not able to estimate the exact cost of the upgrades. She only could say costs would have been substantial.

-- Steve Hartsman (hartsman@ticon.net), January 26, 1999

Answers

Steve, here's the thread, from three days ago:

Grocery Store shuts down to avoid costs of remediation

-- No Spam Please (anon@ymous.com), January 26, 1999.

This sounds a lot like "the straw that broke the camel's back" rather than the principal cause for the shutdown. Only the folks who get to look at the store's books would really be able to tell.

I wonder if some legal eagle recommended blaming Y2K as a method of stalling creditors and getting a better liquidation deal than bankruptcy would give. I don't see how, but several lawyers I know currently have no clue what the legal implications of Y2K are or will be. The law takes years to evolve, and there is no clear (or even un- clear) legal precedent for what is happening. They are making it up as they go along, and lawyers as a rule aren't particularly good at that.

-- Paul Neuhardt (neuhardt@ultranet.com), January 27, 1999.