Convenience store equipment technician - cold-chain power-loss emergency SOP: cabinet doors stay shut and observation runs through the glass and the temperature display, triage splits whole-store outage from tripped breaker from single-cabinet fault, and restocking rides on the log, never on look-and-smell

You are the equipment technician for a strip of
convenience stores, maintaining reach-in coolers
and freezers. Write an archivable Cold-Chain
Power Loss Emergency SOP. The readers are store
shift crews - a cold-chain fault leaves a gap
between the report call and your arrival, and
this SOP governs what happens inside that gap.
Write it as a document executable on shift:
every step carries a condition, and no step is
a principle without one.

Open the document with one piece of framing:
every door opening measurably shortens the
holdover time, so opening the door to check is
itself a loss. Order every action around "doors
shut, log it, act on the line."

1. Triage (separate three cases; triage itself
   never opens a door)
- Whole store dark (register and lights down):
  check this store's breaker panel main, then
  look next door - the neighbors dark too means
  an area outage; wait for power, it is not a
  repair incident. Only this store dark: the
  fault is internal wiring; call it in and say
  "just us"
- Multiple cabinets down (coolers and freezers
  together, lights normal): check the breaker
  panel for the tripped circuit - reset once;
  if it trips again, leave it and call the
  repair line
- One cabinet down (all others normal): the
  cabinet's own fault, compressor or thermostat
  class; call it in and wait. No disassembly,
  no moving product out
- Triage looks at exactly three things -
  breaker panel, the neighbors, the cabinet
  temperature display - and opens no door:
  triage is fast not because speed matters but
  because door-open triage costs cold
- Escalate: within [report deadline] of
  confirming, call the repair line and notify
  the store manager; cold-chain faults outrank
  doors, lights, and shelving calls, and the
  call says "cold chain"

2. Holdover (from triage to the deadline, only
   three actions)
- Doors stay shut: on glass-door reach-ins,
  look through the door at product and the
  frost line; copy the temperature display
  where there is one. No display: do not guess
  the cabinet temperature - let the log speak
- Open multidecks (doorless coolers) pull the
  night curtain or drop the cover - the
  curtain exists precisely to hold cold air in
- Write down the fault-noticed time, the
  displayed temperature at that moment, and
  roughly how full the cabinet is - these
  three drive every judgment that follows

3. The deadline (power or repair still not back
   at [maximum holdover time])
- Size the fallback first: can this store's
  other healthy cabinets, or a neighboring
  store's cooler, free up enough space for
  this cabinet's product? If yes: move it in
  one door opening, and keep logging
  temperature at the destination
- If no: pull the product, tag it "sealed -
  power loss, pending disposition," stack it
  tight under insulation, and keep logging
- Transfers and sealing go on the log - time,
  what moved, to where. Reconciliation, write-
  offs, and accountability all want this sheet

4. The log (one temperature-and-actions sheet,
   run start to finish)
- Header: cabinet ID / cooler or freezer /
  fault noticed at / starting temperature
  reading / logger
- Row: time / displayed temperature / door
  openings / what was done (call, transfer,
  sealed)
- First row at discovery, one row per check
  round, denser rows as the clock approaches
  [maximum holdover time]. Door openings get
  their own column because they convert
  directly into holdover time - this sheet
  decides whether the product ever sells
  again; without it, the over-temperature
  window is a guess

5. Recovery (power back or repaired)
- Restored power is not permission to restock:
  product goes back only after the display
  reads inside [cooler temperature limit] /
  [freezer temperature limit] and holds there
  for [stability period]
- Product with logged time over [temperature
  limit] follows company disposition rules;
  where the company has no rule, it does not
  go back - write it off rather than gamble
- State the prohibition in the document: "it
  smells fine," "still feels cold," and "looks
  normal" are not restock criteria - the
  cold chain carries rice balls, sandwiches,
  and other fresh food whose spoilage the
  senses cannot read
- Output: the five-section SOP plus a blank
  log-sheet template, ready to file in the
  store's emergency folder

Constraints:
- No invented temperatures, durations, or
  regulation numbers - every figure stays in
  [brackets] for company policy to fill; the
  SOP body carries not one hard number
- No "report promptly" or "store the product
  properly" lines without a decision condition
- No equipment brands or model numbers;
  actions stay generic, and users add the
  steps for their own cabinets
- No exceptions to the sensory ban - smell,
  touch, and sight are all excluded as restock
  criteria
- No pleasantries - start at section one

Why it is written this way

Opening the door is the loss, and that is the anchor of the whole document. A crew member facing a dead cooler wants to open it and see - looking feels like knowing - but a glass door and a temperature display already carry the information, and the opening only vents the cold. "Doors shut" is pinned into both the triage and holdover sections because it is the one action in the flow where not acting beats acting, and that realization never happens spontaneously at 6 a.m. with the cabinet dead; it has to be decided in advance. The night curtain on open multidecks is the same principle in another shape: no door, so the curtain holds the cold air in - which is what it is for on every ordinary night too.

Triage is a three-way split because the three paths lead to completely different actions: whole-store outage means wait for power, multiple cabinets down means a tripped circuit, one cabinet down means wait for repair. Pick the wrong branch and the store burns its holdover budget on the wrong wait. All three checkpoints sit outside the cabinet - breaker panel, the neighbors, the temperature display - so triage itself spends no cold, which is why it can safely go first. The glance next door is the convenience-store-specific move: stores sit shoulder to shoulder on the strip, and whether the neighbor has power separates an area outage from this store's fault in one look, saving both a wasted repair run and a wasted wait.

The log is the only basis for restocking. The expensive part of an outage is never the cabinet; it is the fresh food and frozen goods inside it. Once power returns, whether anything can be sold depends on exactly one thing - a credible record of temperature and actions. Door openings get their own column because they convert directly into holdover time: two logs with the same starting point, one with five openings and one with none, should end in different dispositions. Without the sheet, the restock decision collapses back into sensory judgment, and the senses cannot read spoilage in a rice ball.

Every number stays blank, on purpose. Companies rule their cold chains differently, and cabinet types hold cold differently - a multideck, an island case, and a drawer freezer are not the same machine. Hard-code one temperature or duration into an SOP and the crew will execute it as authority; an invented number is far more dangerous than an empty bracket. The variable table says where each figure comes from: the company's food-safety policy, the storage statement on the product label, the cabinet manual. "Write it off rather than gamble" goes in as a principle - a write-off is a loss you can count, and one bad item sold to a customer is a loss this store cannot pay.

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