Grocery folks... surviving Thanksgiving hell?

[bean]

I survived round one of "thanksgiving hell" <tm>. I call the days leading up to Thanksgiving, thanksgiving hell round one. I classify the day before Thanksgiving as round two.

I only rang $12k today, but broke my personal record for coupons. Nearly 100 coupons, totaling nearly $350.00. Most of them store promos, but... I've never broken $150 before, and never broken 30 coupons.

Round Two begins for me at 2pm tomorrow (er, today?), and doesn't end until at least 10pm. If it's anything like today, I'll probably wind up clocking out at 11:00 - 11:30 (we don't close until 11pm the day before turkey day... normally we close at 10pm).

I'm normally not one to hit up bars after work. Tonight the asst dept manager invited me out to one of the store's favorite bars (which happens to be a block from my apartment), along with several other people, and we had some pitchers and traded stories for a couple of hours. Definitely bored my roommate, but he wanted to get out of the house and wanted to meet some of my coworkers.

BRING IT ON MOFOS! BRING IT ON! BRING ON ROUND TWO WITH FIRE!

[SG15Z]

We're a 24-hour store. How do you think I did? As the "closing" FES last night it sucked. Today's gonna suck too, as I remember it being sucky last year and the year before....etc.

Thankfully we're scheduled to have every register open from 9am to 9pm so that's a plus I guess. So glad I leave at 9pm. I feel sorry for the "closing" FES though. Who knows when she'll leave. She has to work at 8:30am the next day too.

[AccountingDrone]

You have my deepest sympathy ... the only thing I buy the day before Thanksgiving is cream for whipping and half and half for the coffee/mashed potatoes/cream potage des haricots[this years soup de jour]

My pies are already made, cranberry sauce made, veggies ready to prep, sourdough loaf is rising in its tub in the fridge ... turkey is in the fridge thawing out. Everything is ready to pack into the car tomorrow morning and head up to my mums. I am picking up the dairy this morning after my doctor's appointment.

Honestly, people KNOW the damned holiday happens every year. How hard is it to actually plan ahead? You know the menu, you know the ingredients, you know you need to actually HAVE the damned stuff for thursday. How hard is it to actually shop?

[SG15Z]

Honestly, people KNOW the damned holiday happens every year. How hard is it to actually plan ahead? You know the menu, you know the ingredients, you know you need to actually HAVE the damned stuff for thursday. How hard is it to actually shop?

It must be pretty hard because I had a lot of $200+ orders today all the way up to 8pm. And of course complaints about us being out of something, but that was actually rare. We only ran out of one item. That's it. We may actually have enough turkeys to sell tomorrow before noon. I'm kinda shocked. Usually we're out of all but one brand by Wednesday night. Maybe it has something to do with the fact we didn't have a free turkey coupon this year like we use to.

[lupo pazzesco]

It must be pretty hard because I had a lot of $200+ orders today all the way up to 8pm. And of course complaints about us being out of something, but that was actually rare. We only ran out of one item. That's it. We may actually have enough turkeys to sell tomorrow before noon. I'm kinda shocked. Usually we're out of all but one brand by Wednesday night. Maybe it has something to do with the fact we didn't have a free turkey coupon this year like we use to.

May not have had a free turkey coupon, but when I was in the local Kroger by me, I heard a woman arguing about the turkey dinner offer and why she couldn't put it on food stamps. >.>

As for not realizing the holiday happens the same time every year? Geez, I had my stuff a couple weeks ago, except for the fresh produce, got that on Sunday. Even though I'm just cooking a small meal for me, I'm prepared. When I used to cook for my family, I'd have everything in advance, too. Some people...

[bean]

I survived.

And rang $13,700.

My drawer was short 5 cents... I blame the roll of nickles I opened :P

People were actually surprisingly nice for the most part. And the store blew projected sales away. They were projecting 260k, they were about to break 275k when I left an hour before close.

Good thing I left for work early... normally it takes me less than 10 minutes to get to work. Today it took me 20 because of traffic, then I circled the parking lot for a good 5 minutes or so before I could find a parking spot (even the employee parking was overflowing). I finally wound up parking in the neighboring store's lot, that store is currently vacant and our customers were still overflowing into that lot by a decent amount.

It was a lot calmer than last Thanksgiving - I think partly because I didn't have one hand on the PLU book for most of my shift this year (I'd only been cashiering a month or two last Thanksgiving), partly because frontend is run a lot better now.

[SG15Z]

May not have had a free turkey coupon, but when I was in the local Kroger by me, I heard a woman arguing about the turkey dinner offer and why she couldn't put it on food stamps. >.>

OMG, I hate these people. So many people try to buy hot foods from the deli on Food Stamps. Do these people not pay attention when they get they're FS cards? You can't buy hot foods with Foods Stamps. One guy kept asking me if I as sure. And I kept saying yes I'm positive. My goodness how come the vast majority on these welfare programs don't know what they can and can't get! It drives me nuts they give you all the information you need people! UGH!

[LadyAndreca]

I have to admit, once didn't have the ingredients I needed for a holiday dinner. We had decided to have duck just to be different but couldn't find the ingredients (namely, the duck!) when I discovered that the local grocery store had rabbits!

I popped home to check with my hubby and get a recipie for ingredients, then bought everything on Christmas Eve. But I was calm and completely understanding that I was being a bit of an idiot shopping on that day and that there were going to be lines. Come to think of it, it was eerily calm in general that day. Just horribly busy in the store.

[Iced Coffee Man]

All quiet on the southern front.

[DerangedHermit]

It was pretty busy at my store with 17 of 19 possible registers open at one point yesterday (the only ones that weren't were the CDH's register and Register 1, which never has a till) .

I was on self-checkout, which was surprisingly not horrible.

My store did ~$200K Sunday, and that was the least busy of the days. I can't imagine how ridiculous it must have been the past three days.

[bean]

Today was kinda fun.

The store was actually pretty busy, but we closed at 2pm. We've had signs on every door, and all around the store, giving our holiday hours. We started making closing announcements 30 minutes before closing.

I was on express, which I normally hate, but there's an entrance right in front of the register I was on. At 1:59 I walked over to the door and turned it off, then blocked it with carts to make it obvious "hey, this door is closed".

A few minutes later I hear a loud *THUNK* and look over... someone had just walked face first into the closed door from outside. They didn't look too happy when they got up and saw several cashiers and customers laughing (behind a locked door no less).

People were still pulling up into the parking lot when I left the store, at 2:45pm. I sat in the lot for about 10 minutes just watching people park, get out of their cars, then walk up to the doors and start scratching their heads when the doors didn't open (nevermind the fact that 95% of the lights inside the store were off at that point as well). They didn't seem to take notice of the fact that the parking lot was almost completely empty (a handful of employee cars were on the edge of the lot).

[Teysa]

Once again, I'm glad I don't work front end. Wednesday I had the fun of hanging tags and directing people to the aluminum foil. I went in for a few hours yesterday to work on some things and it was more of the same. The poor bookkeeper went out on the sales floor for something and promptly ducked back into the office where it was safer. I can't say I blamed her.

[SG15Z]

A few minutes later I hear a loud *THUNK* and look over... someone had just walked face first into the closed door from outside. They didn't look too happy when they got up and saw several cashiers and customers laughing (behind a locked door no less).

Excuse me for a second....



Ok I feel better.

[dalesys]

A few minutes later I hear a loud *THUNK* and look over... someone had just walked face first into the closed door from outside. They didn't look too happy when they got up and saw several cashiers and customers laughing (behind a locked door no less).

Incredible String Band time:

Well you may have observed
When you walk into a wall door
You get a certain sensation of reality

[DGoddessChardonnay]

I survived Thanksgiving Hell week pretty well overall . . .

Monday was just a half day for me . . . we also had our Thanksgiving dinner, so several of us brought sides and desserts and drinks (our Deli department cooked the turkey for us) so we ate around 12:30.

I was already clocked out and had what I needed to do done before 12, so my plan was to hang around to eat with Ma and Butthead and several of the others, then leave. But we ended up getting a late Cheerwine truck, so I had 2 pallets to check in and a potato chip guy to also check in. I ended up leaving around 1:30.

Tuesday was truck day and I had 2 pallets come in . . . not too bad though. I had half my truck done by the time I left around 4.

Wednesday I finished up my truck before lunchtime, and that included having to stop a couple of times to help bag up front when the lines would start backing up. By 11 a.m. (and we open at 7) we'd already had $10,000 in sales (haven't checked back with L yet to see what the final tally was for Thanksgiving Eve, but I'm sure we did rather well.) So after lunch, I ran holiday items to the floor to get as much out of backstock as I could, ran regular backstock and finished straightening up the main aisle. L didn't need any additional help up front and it was kinda slow around 2, so I called it a day a little early and hauled ass outta there.

Friday I worked only 2 hours to get my order together for Monday's delivery and sent to the computer. I was planning to work at least 5 hours, but of course the Kitty is cutting hours *sigh.*

But at least I had the rest of the day free, as well as Saturday and Sunday. So I'm considering my 2 1/2 days off a partial vacation in lieu of the vacation I didn't get to actually take.

I did notice something odd on Friday: even though it was a bit slow due to everybody being out at the malls/shopping venues, I was seeing a couple of customers leaving our store with FULL BUGGIES.

I guess their families must have wiped their cupboards and fridge clean in one day if they've had to come back in the day after and buy up another buggy full of groceries.

Of course they're welcome to come back and buy another buggy full or two . . . sales are sales.