The wildest part of that to me is that OP couldn't help out because there was somehow something more pressing than every non-franchise store not being able to accept payment and likely needing a lot of expertise to patch it fast enough.

There isn't enough detail for me to know how serious is was in regards to stores not being able to accept payments, but a date of this blog being 2010, and it being written about a time when every megabyte of filesize matters makes me think it was possibly much earlier, like maybe 2001-2005. If that's the case, maybe not being able to process cards wasn't as big of a deal as it would be today because you could likely assume most if not all customers could pay with cash if card payments were down.

I thought the same. Probably his boss first had to realize that OPs teammates needed more help.