Great comment as I heard it in Mark Addys voice as soon as you said it <| sep |> Why do all terrorists have small feet ? <| sep |> Debit and credit run through the WiFi . They are probably just having connection issues . When I worked at McDonald ' s we had Bell WiFi , which was terrible and would sometimes cut out randomly for a while and then come back . If it didn ' t it was a huge hassle . We couldn ' t reset it ourselves because everything was in a locked black box . We had to call a special McDonald ' s hot line for the POS system for basic trouble shooting before being allowed to be transferred to the Internet company can ' t call directly because we aren ' t the owner who would try more stuff . But ultimately a tech has to open and open the box and reset it . unousepics The unplugged cables may be them trying to reset the debit machines andor the POS . On ours we had to unplug and wait a few minutes and plug it back . Sometimes it worked again . And that box you are talking about is where cables plug into for the internet , debit and other stuff for the POS . We used to tuck it under the monitor of the register cause it looks neater most places do this or mount it below the counter but if they were resetting it that is probably why it is out .