Black Friday debriefing thread!

[Sunsetsky]

At my work, they scheduled almost every cashier that day. It wasn't even busy to be honest. In the first hour I was at work I only had five customers...and I work at walmart. You would expect for them to be busy on Black Friday. Nothing eventful really happened. I did hear there were a few fights in the early morning.

[Pezzle]

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.

Exactly. We lost huge ass amounts of money on a laptop we had on sale, however because we sold a lot of things like Vonage phone adapters/wireless routers/printers/inks/cables/technician services with it, we made an even bigger profit by attracting the crazy ass customers with such "incredible" deals.

[Threesidedorchid]

Since I work at a chain bookstore, we don't get hit that hard by black friday. Lines, yes, but not heightofholidayseason bad, and not a lot of insanity since we don't generally have OMG! that's an amazing sale! sales.

I had one customer who insisted that we had 'early bird specials' and asked every employee she could find where they were (after looking at me like I was moronic for telling her they don't exist)

For the most part, we got to point and laugh at the people who tried to get into our store from 6am (when I and the rest of the stock team showed up and turned on the lights) to 9 (our normal opening time).

A sister store of ours though, one that makes much more than us, had a problem w/ communications that day and ALL communications were down for the day. No phones to call other stores and check merchandise, no compters to check their own merchandise or order it, and No Credit Cards or Checks accepted. Cash only. on black friday.
I can't even imagine what that must have been like.