Black Friday Debriefing Thread 2008

[Teysa]

I remember understanding how money worked at that age, but sales tax confused me. I thought if an item said $1.00 then I should only have to pay that much. Fortunately the clerks were pretty patient with me when I pulled the ole 'do I have enough to buy this' game. I also tried to at least be nice about it.

[McGoddess09]

Fast food was affected too

I swear I am going to bitchsmack the person who predicts our projection sales.

We weren't expected to have alot of business, so we had way less people. We were only expected to do not even $200 for the first lunch our. We did over $600 with one person in drive thru, one person up front, the manager and three people in the grill, one of whom is not really experienced at grill(me) and the other is just the worst worker I have ever seen.

There's always that one person who calls in Black Friday, even when they are told not to because ALOT of people asked for that day off. I ended up working from 4 am to 1:30 pm, managing the grill area that I barely knew.

We are by a Wal Mart for pity sakes!! Why would anyone expect us to do very little when there are mad hordes of people wanting food after they shop?

[persephone]

We are by a Wal Mart for pity sakes!! Why would anyone expect us to do very little when there are mad hordes of people wanting food after they shop?

Because someone in corporate (or whoever would do those projections) forgot to take that into account. They think "Black Friday -- everyone will be shopping. We'll be in the clear!" without thinking "Black Friday -- everyone will be shopping right by us and will all be hungry".

I'm sorry you had a rough day!

[crazylegs]

So I've dragged the police scanner over to my desk to listen in. So far, going by the police lingo and our cop reporter's translation guide (and this is at nine in the morning here)...

They don't have secure comms?

[Jester]

I'm sure if they wait awhile, someone will try to buy him...

Or sell him....

a woman who was buying Leapfrog systems was going around TAKING THEM OUT OF OTHER PEOPLE'S CARTS because she "had to have one for each of her 8 grandchildren."

And of course her grandchildren are more important than the loved ones of the people whose carts she was stealing these from....

'That's stupid, why should I have to wait for the five a.m. items, bring them out now!'

'What do you meeeeaaaaannnn this is for Satuday only? I'm here today!'

'Just go get me the Satuday **item**. I'll pay full price.'

'Why isn't BIGNAMEBRAND on sale? Everything else is!'

'Why aren't you giving out free stuff, the mall is?'

'Why won't your Farbucks (we have a coffee bar inside our store) give me free coffee refills, the mall i?.'

"I'm sorry, I don't make the policies, but that is what management has decided."
"I'm sorry, I don't make the policies, but that is what management has decided."
"I'm sorry, I don't make the policies, but that is what management has decided."
"I'm sorry, I don't make the policies, but that is what management has decided."
"I'm sorry, I don't make the policies, but that is what management has decided."
"I'm sorry, I don't make the policies, but that is what management has decided."

dammit, i forgot to watch that! and i so wanted to see customers acting stupid on national tv.

Silly question: why would you want to watch on tv what you see in person every work day?!???!

Today's ad featured a piece of jewelry..the ad said the sale was good till midnight. Only trouble is we close the jewelry counter at 10 and lock the keys in the cash office. Customer comes up at 11:50pm and wants the piece of jewelry.

She says she doesn't understand why they would put in the ad that it was good til midnight if jewelry closed at 10.

Dumb move on management's part. The woman was in the right here. If you advertise a special for "until midnight" it seems like a stupid move to lock it up at 10, don't ya think?

So guess who had to schlep a big box of reed diffusers through the crowd and stock them all by his lonesome?

Okay, I give up. What the bloody hell are reed diffusers?!?!?!?!

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Okay, I give up. What the bloody hell are reed diffusers?!?!?!?!

An air freshener of sorts.

You open up the bottle of scented fragrance oil and stick the reeds inside, and the reeds disperse the fragrance throughout the room.

[El Pollo Guerrera]

An air freshener of sorts.

Oh.

My guess was that is was some kind of insiduous weapon to be used against the Fantastic Four... my bad.

[katie kaboom]

Silly question: why would you want to watch on tv what you see in person every work day?!???!

Because stupid customers are much more amusing when I'm not the one dealing with them. Also, I'm easily amused.

[McGoddess09]

Because someone in corporate (or whoever would do those projections) forgot to take that into account. They think "Black Friday -- everyone will be shopping. We'll be in the clear!" without thinking "Black Friday -- everyone will be shopping right by us and will all be hungry".

I'm sorry you had a rough day!

Thanks for the sentiments!

[Meegz]

I found it surprising at my store. One lady stopped every associate to say "I'm not paying $40 for this cake plate YA'LL BETTER GIVE ME A 10% DISCOUNT THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS I AM POOR!" Yet when my associate (sorta kidding around, but not) offered our store's 10% discount opening a CREDIT CARD she accepted. Is it just me, but you can't afford the extra 4 dollars for an item you don't need because of the economy, but you'll open up a new credit card??? I'm lost.

[cinema guy]

My guess was that is was some kind of insiduous weapon to be used against the Fantastic Four... my bad.

Clever!

[pssorens]

we had a major system crash of the automatic CAF system it was pulling huge batch's that where either back stock or discontinued merchandise. Then I had several team members that spent most of the night doing Nothing.

[nomorecarts]

I work in a huge supercenter, we did almost $1.2M on friday, compared to $815k last year. we did expand, but grocery didn't do $400k on black friday, toys, softlines, and electronics were(obviously) the biggest sellers, with a large quantity of softlines sold on saturday(still on sale) and back to business as usual sunday, not having the huge drop off we had last year post black friday


they had the self checkouts closed when I got there at 10, and i was asked why, but politely, so I simply told them my best guess would be shoplifting, and another possibility i thought of later is that the CSMs didn't have time to be going over there every 2 seconds, but that had to be a source of suck when(if) those were the only registers that weren't open. I didn't see any suck bad enough for me to take the time to notice it

[tamezin]

I agree. The tramplers should all receive murder charges. No need for charging into the store like that.

Everyone who 'charged' the store should have charges brought up against them, not just the tramplers. This was senseless and insane. I can't believe anyone behaves this way.

[crazylegs]

Everyone who 'charged' the store should have charges brought up against them, not just the tramplers. This was senseless and insane. I can't believe anyone behaves this way.

I can.

In a normal situation you require around 1 square metre of space around you to move, because when you walk you also have some side to side movement.

If this space becomes impinged (for example in a crush situation) then essentially the crowd begins to move as one, the side to side movement becomes synchronysed and people lose control (through no fault of their own) of their actions. The people at the back don't realise there is a problem at the front and keep pressing forward and those at the front become a moving block that is unstoppable.

Pretty much the same (but on a much larger scale) happened at Hillsborough.