Black Friday debriefing thread!

[Jester]

Also, we had suits visit the store before we opened. One of them asked me if I was "jacked up". I said "Jacked up as in excited on jacked up as in ESPN highlight reel jacked up?"

Okay, you win. That is now officially the closest I have coming to violating Rule #1!
I was actually drinking beer when I read that, and only my Iron Will saved my keyboard and/or mouse from sudsy damage.

Okay, maybe not such a good joke, but I'm trying.

Yes. You're very trying. (This is where Jester ducks quickly to avoid any potential projectiles.)

By the way, still no sign of your parents.


My Black Friday was relatively uneventful, all things considered. The food service industry, as I have mentioned, is not overly affected by the day, which is fine by me. Yes, we had some drama here and there with the staff, but overall, pretty damn smooth.

And I even had a rare treat: I rarely eat steak. Not because of any health issues or anything, I am just not a steak person. I average about 1 steak a year. No, I am not kidding. (Fish fear me. Cows love me.) But tonight my kitchen ran a special on a bleu cheese-stuffed filet mignon. It looked great, and it has been a while (had not had a steak in 2006 yet), so as I was shifting to dinnertime supervisory mode from lunchtime bartender mode, I ordered myself one. Rare.

Ab. So. Lute. Ly. Perfect! The only flaw to the meal was the fact that I couldn't have a cold frosty beer to wash it down with. Ah, well....at least my new position allows me to get such fare for free.

[ArenaBoy]

My black Friday was uneventful aside from the fact that two guys tried to bribe me it was boring as hell. Not many people came to the arena for a basketball game.

[Confuzed-Monkey]

Our day wasn't to exciting either way. We were busy during the morning rush, but it really died after lunch time.

Of course I got a few of the usual "special" calls.

CALL #1

The first one was an older lady wanting to know if we had any of the crock pots left, they were 10 dollars. I told that we had sold out by about 10 in the morning, it was around noon when she called. Her exact words were

"WELL WHY DON"T YOU TELL PEOPLE THAT IT"S A LIMITED ITEM?"

It kind of caught me off guard, because she screamed it in the phone. All I said was "I'm not sure." It wasn't till a little while later that I actually looked at the add myself. On just about every page it says "HURRY, SUPPLIES ARE LIMITED"


Here is a link to the sale page. It's the big one on the left. It says it right in the red box that says "FRIDAY ONLY"
http://lowes.shoplocal.com/lowes/Def...ailerid=-99564

IDIOTS


CALL #2 (easier of the two)

Another lady called to ask if we had one of the microwave in the paper, making sure we still had one in stock. Then she said that she couldn't come by today, but she wanted to come in Saturday and buy it, but for the Friday Only price. HA SORRY NO RAINCHECKS.
I thought about telling her to buy it as a pickup later, but it was a 30 dollar unit.


---I still wonder,

When I see a sale, especially for the now popular sale date, why do people assume they can stroll in late in the day and still find any remnants of these deals left?

Do people not realize the whole "Open at 5am" craze?

Alot of it will be gone by later in the day. I did feel bad for some of the people though. They honestly looked really disappointed that we didn't have any left. But only for those people that didn't make an A$$ out of themselves when they didn't get it.

End of Messages.

CM

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

It is now time for the final Bungee Boss update.

Yes, he has been fired. Sacked. Shit-canned. Handed the axe. Put in the mobility pool.

Thursday night, Bungee Boss did absolutely none of the things he was asked to do, and then went home to his Thanksgiving (Wild) turkey--without locking up the store and turning the alarms on

I shit you not. The store manager got a call at home at about 9:00 (three hours after we closed) from the alarm company. I guess they must've had a list of all the stores and noticed that for some reason we still hadn't alarmed yet.

Bungee Boss left both sets of entrance doors open, along with the overhead doors in the backroom. We had at least 25 grand worth of TVs and DVD players down the main aisle in front of the pharmacy doors. Thank God we didn't have people lining up so early, or that there weren't any criminals nearby, because they could've been in and out with our merchandise in minutes and the alarms would not have gone off. It would've been a very black Friday indeed.

Store manager was understandably livid, and he normally doesn't get mad about anything. He told us last night "If I would've had a gun, I would've shot him."

I don't know if Bungee Boss was so blotto he didn't remember to lock up, or if he thought he was doing us thrid-shifters a favor by leaving the doors open. Either way, it was a colossal feat of stupid.

[Crazyredhead]

I didn't get a chance to get out for black Friday. My loan didn't get approved until around 11:00 that afternoon. But I didn't see the festivities on the news last night.

When they opened the doors it was like horses at a racetrack when the gate opens. Everyone just started pushing and shoving through the doors and running hell bent. They even showed a fight that started in the electronics section.

My husband is glad that I didn't, he stated that he really didn't want to have to come and get me from the ER. They showed a woman that had to get taken away on a stretcher.

[danegrous_21]

well my friday seem more unorganized that chaotic. i tell my story in numbers

1. i work at a sports and outdoors store. people that live in the south will know what im talking about. mainly texans. we have a walmart next door, just seperated by a little parking lot in between. i reported at 6 like 99% of the other day shift people, a few came in at 5. to my surprise we have a line of people waiting to open. we open at 7. take a note of this

2. so the MOD at the time gives us a good store meeting, and such. then gets a call from one other store in McAllen,texas. to what i find out we have a nice little rivalry between our store and theirs. seem like the open at 6. were like ok, we finish our meeting, then i find were going to open early. perfect. i digress

3. we run a weekly ad,and we had a special ad. so i had to know where all our sections sale were. i semi-knew since i been there for a while. but wait, like usually, they like to throw curveball. all the sale merch is mostly on the racetrack(racetrack(def)-our apparel section takes up the whole center of store. it has carpet on it. the tile walkway goes completly around it. this is a racetrack). alot of our specials where here, a different place then we expeceted. so it was annoying at first, but we got used to it.

4. we had a clothing debacle. we had university of texas(sucks they lost the game) hoodie for 10 bucks. we had a 4-way rack with UT and Texas A&m on it. we noticed the UT hoodie were running low, so im in charge of license materials(anything with a sports name or college team goes in this section, but at our store in we are in south texas, we only have the cowboys,texans,spurs,UT,A&m for the most part, but alot of different basball caps) i go to get more out. i cant find any, but i see that we have alook alike. i have a crapload of the look alike but none of the actuall product i needeed, now we are kinda scarmbling b/c we are about out. then i started find some in we we keep our regular stuff at(yes the rack of hoodie was like halfway across the store from we all the rest of the hoodies were at. makes sense? to me, no.). then i look at the two hoodies in question spured on by a customer. the two hoodies are 98% the same. both have just texas written in black outline and are burnt orange. the sale one was 9.99 was just a little lighter orange than the other one. the big difernence that made a 5 dollar difernerce. 2 different companies. russel made the 15 buck one, some random as company made the sale one. so we have like 20 of the sale items but a buttload of the not sale one. someone on overnight stocking made a big mistake. as it comehow cost us b/c the average person is goin to say the russel was on sale b/c it looks like the ad pic. that was annoying. and most people didnt want to cough up the extra 5 bucks(dont know why15 bucks for a hoodie is hella cheap)

thats my debreifing, debacles, miscommnications, and running around like a chicken....well you know the rest

[Horsetuna]

Being in Canada, We dont really have Black Friday.

But we still got affected by it.

Apparently you Americans were using so many Debit cards it crashed OUR Interact system!

More tonight *scoots as is on lunch break*

[AFpheonix]

We didn't really get affected by it back in the pharmacy, other than people who didn't want to wait in the ginormous line up front coming and ringing out with us. (Who in the heck comes to a drugstore for an 8 hour sale on Black Friday?) It's not like we were having a half price sale on Percocet or anything.
When I got in our parking lot was totally full. I had a hard time getting a spot to park in.
Really, I only had a few tard customers that day, anyways. Most of the doctors' offices were closed anyways, so all we got were a few refills and some emergency scripts.

[Jester]

Being as so many of you suffered on Black Friday, I thought I would give you a little levity to lighten the load. (Alliteration provided free of charge.) My favorite web comic (okay, I only read one web comic, but it rocks) had a brilliant take on Black Friday, and I thought y'all might enjoy it. You can find it here. Enjoy!

[Jetfire]

Being in Canada, We dont really have Black Friday.

But we still got affected by it.

Apparently you Americans were using so many Debit cards it crashed OUR Interact system!

More tonight *scoots as is on lunch break*

May have already been explained; but from what I understand the troubles in the Canadian Debit system were reportedly due to a bad software patch on the Moneris network, which basically broke connectivity.

So any ATM that used that network + all the store debit machines that used that system + all the RBC and BMO machines (They own the Moneris network) were out of commision for the 90 minutes or so (between 4:30 and 6PM Friday. )

At least that's what I read in the newspaper the next day. The Company rep was stressing that it was NOT due to Load but just a bad software patch.

[Pezzle]

I worked an 18 hour shift on Black Friday as a crowd control/line runner person. I've worked 37 hours in three days, and I'm f*ing exhausted beyond holy hell.

There was one lady who was so impatient waiting in the line I was managing (by the way as part of some stupid contest we had I was voted best crowd control by far, I kept my line in mad shape and I kept them as docile as possible). She kept saying like "I've moved like 1 foot in a half hour what the hell is taking so long!?". She was standing in the line to sign up for Vonage (but we were also doing Laptop Voucher claims) and she was just whine whine bitch bitch whine bitch, it just did not end! She kept also insisting that we put a sign up saying our Wii display boxes are not real Wiis, even though the Wii display boxes say really big "DISPLAY BOX ONLY". She said we were committing false advertisement by having the boxes out, even though ALL of our entrances have a big sign saying "SORRY TEMPORARILY SOLD OUT OF Wii"

But yeah I had people literally screaming and threatening to sue me in my face, and I jus tkind of stared at one dot on the wall and said standard "yup" "uh huh" "I feel yea" until they got the hint and stopped pushing my buttons. Apparently I'm also considered quite intimidating.

but no i had to endure eighteen straight hours of that on my feet. I only got a whole 45 minutes of break time too.

[Ree]

May have already been explained; but from what I understand the troubles in the Canadian Debit system were reportedly due to a bad software patch on the Moneris network, which basically broke connectivity.

Thanks. I hadn't read anything, but I knew everything was down all over our area.

I didn't realize how extensive it was.

[gijoecam]

snip...

When I see a sale, especially for the now popular sale date, why do people assume they can stroll in late in the day and still find any remnants of these deals left?

Do people not realize the whole "Open at 5am" craze?
...snip

As a customer, that whole phenomenon still boggles my mind. Why can't stores stock up on items they know are going to be popular on that day? Creating an artificial shortage on any particular day just because it's going to be on sale sucks for all us average schmoes looking for Christmas bargains. If the item you're selling is on sale, odds are you're still making anyways, so why artificially create a shortage of product? It's always been shady in my eyes...

-Joe

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

As a customer, that whole phenomenon still boggles my mind. Why can't stores stock up on items they know are going to be popular on that day? Creating an artificial shortage on any particular day just because it's going to be on sale sucks for all us average schmoes looking for Christmas bargains. If the item you're selling is on sale, odds are you're still making anyways, so why artificially create a shortage of product? It's always been shady in my eyes...

-Joe

It isn't as shady as you think. For one thing, we would have no room in our backroom to store that much stuff, and no room on the salesfloor to display it. We had about 400 DVD players on sale for 16 bucks, and those went in less than an hour. How many more do you think we should have had?

Plus it's kind of a guessing game as to what's going to sell and what isn't. Corporate though domestics items like throws, comforters, quilts, electric blankets and featherbeds were going to sell like crazy, so they sent us lots of pallets of that stuff. Then Black Friday came and we couldn't give it away. Everybody went for toys and electronics and that was basically it.

[trunks2k]

As a customer, that whole phenomenon still boggles my mind. Why can't stores stock up on items they know are going to be popular on that day?

Because the object is mainly to draw a crowd. They likely take a large loss on the items that are marked down that much. But it's more than made up for with other purchases people will make when they go to store to buy that item. If said item is not available, they are likely to buy goods that actually make the store money by the simple fact of being in the store, and in an even better scenario, purchase a similar item that will actually make the store money.