Black Friday Debriefing Thread 2009

[Jester]

Damn if it weren't for my daughter being up here I would move to Key West. Would probably be better for my writing

You would think so, but that is not always the case. My friend Popcorn moved down here a few years ago for just that reason, and actually found he was getting less writing done here. There are a lot of distractions to be had in Key West, and these days, it could really be an interference to your writing, as my friend found out.

Of course, I reserve the right to be horribly and embarrassingly wrong on this.....

[jackfaire]

See I blame those Mervyn commercials where the people would be standing outside the store at O'Dark Thirty (cool name for a band) chanting open over and over again.

Thus encouraging the first black friday behavior that I remember.

And then it spreads to the next generation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqgVtWE_hjg

Of course, I reserve the right to be horribly and embarrassingly wrong on this.....

Meh wouldn't bother me actually I doubt I will ever get a book published and it doesn't bother me. Really I live life as if I was hanging with all the gang of The Place. Good tunes, great puns, laughter and friends. Course my daughter is smart but not has the whole internet gifting her intelligence smart.

I get distracted from my writing now but people are so freaking uptight around here.

[Morningchaser]

Oh yeah--the suits. I'm sure they will be dropping by sometime tomorrow. Maybe multiple times.

And we have to put the coffee pot out again for the people waiting in line before we open. DM thinks this is a great way to "build brand loyalty" or some such corporate-speak BS. I think it just proves he knows nothing about the people waiting in line. Most of them bring their own coffee.

Speaking of coffee, I heard a certain coffeeshop featuring baristas in green aprons is opening at three. Is that just a local thing or nationwide?

It depends on the store's location, really. We're not near a mall (thank Gord!), but I heard the one that is in our district is opening up early, opening with 10 people (Even in a store like that size you'd usually only have 4 or 5 tops), having 20 people come in at noon, and probably alot more ridiculousness. I feel sorry for those guys and am simultaneously so happy to not be at thier store!

Allegedly we're not supposed to be busy and may even be "slower than usual" according to my manager, but then again he's not working today so he's notorious for not giving a rat's behind about how things will actually work today. I go in from 12:15 until we close, then depending on how bad the day's been I'll either head to the bars or just say screw it, come home, and save my money for the bar the next 2 days

[Jester]

O'Dark Thirty (cool name for a band)

Beer Thirty would be a cool name for a band, too. Especially in any decent bar.

I live life as if I was hanging with all the gang of The Place. Good tunes, great puns, laughter and friends.

Then you would fit right in down here in Key Weird. Come on down!

[RetailSlave]

I work 3rd shift, and my usual shift is 9:30p-6a. Well, our store had a Thanksgiving Sale, a Black Friday sale and a Saturday sale...so my moron Lines Leader decides schedule me to work 10:30p-7a on Wed and Thurday so I would be working into the Thanksgiving morning sale (which started at 6am) and Black Friday (which started at 5am). Since our third shift cashier duties include a cleaning and stocking list a yard long, we came in an hour later and thus had less time to complete our list before it got busy.
It was busy all night Wednesday into Thursday and there were just two of us working the front end, so we barely got stuff done and I wasn't able to take my lunch break until 4:45a (had eaten take out one of the stock crew brought me while I was standing at Uscan). We normally keep Uscan (with 4 12 items or less lanes and four lanes with belts for unlimited items) plus one regular lane open.

When we started the sale at 6am on Thanksgiving I was at Uscan with two other cashiers who had come in at 5:45a. I was running between lanes bagging for customers on the big lanes, keeping items from backing up on the lanes, doing overrides...while they stood and stared at the screen unless they were forced to go do an override. Gee thanks, guys...I have been here working my butt off since 10:30 last night...you just came in.
Well, we got ready for Black Friday..had to clean up the mess left from the night before and make sure all the lanes were stocked with register tape, bags etc. I was on a lane when the sale started...and we had people come thru in spurts. Most of the electronics were being paid for back in that department, same with Jewelry. It wasn't the mad rush craziness that it had been in past years. At a little after 6 most of the cashiers were standing at the end of their lanes with nothing to do. The Lines Leader came down and said she needed one of us to turn off our light and do lane returns. I said I would and then she told me, "Actually, you have been here since last night...I need to send you home." I told her that I didn't want to leave early and lose the pay (my husband got downsized so I am the only one bringing in a paycheck at present). She told me I had to leave "first in, first out". Well, in the past the rule was the one who had been there the longest was given the option of leaving...if they chose not to, then the person who had been there the next longest was asked. I picked up a cartload of returns and went to the Service Desk, where my Team Leader told me that she had to send me home. Once again, I said I didn't want to go and lose the hours...3 or 4 other cashiers were asking to go home and they wouldn't let them go, yet they forced me and the other 3rd shifters to leave and made those cashiers stay..makes no sense to me whatsoever.
I told my husband that if they scheduled me for Black Friday next year I would tell them to just give me my regular shift and let me leave at 6. There was no need for me to stay til 7 and I lost almost an hour's pay because of their refusal to let me stay.
All in all, our Black Friday was pretty quiet. There was one wreck in the parking lot and a couple of people threw fits because we had set up where people had to pay for the 42" TVs we had on sale back in Electronics, then bring their receipt to the front where we had the TVs and a team member would validate the purchase and take the TV to the customers car. They thought since the TVs were up front that they should be able to pay for them at a register..we did the paying at electronics to make sure we didn't sell more than we had, but they eventually let people pay at the registers closest to where the TVs were.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Okay, here we go....

• God bless the person who invented Ibuprofin (kisses a big economy-sized bottle of Ibuprofin).
• To the SCs who decided to stash a bunch of stuff RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE OF ONE OF THE AISLES so they could swoop in and pick it up this morning--Please identify yourselves so I can kick you in the head so hard you poop yourself. If you were trying to hide this stuff, you did it wrong, because it wasn't hidden at all. It was just shoved down an aisle, where somebody could trip over it. Hope you had fun trying to retrieve your stash among the frenzied mob.
• Surprisingly (at least to me), we beat our sales goal for Thanksgiving. Were forecast to do $51,000 and did $53,000 instead. And this was without the big Wii promotion we had last year. Somehow, I recall our Thanksgiving sales last year being in the $40,000s. Folks, this is why stores stay open on holidays. There's always somebody out there wanting to shop, no matter what day it is.
• If there was ever a day corporate should make sure the ad is right, this is it. So it shouldn't surprise you it wasn't. I was missing shitloads of signs. Lots of ad corrections and clarifications. I filled up a side and a half of a page of notebook paper with signs I needed made, handed off to my manager who came at 3 am, and figured that would take care of things....
• Until 4 am rolled around and I got a somewhat frantic phone call from one of the signing people. Seems somebody left a bunch of signs for endstands on the table in the signing people's area, which I was not told about. I was told all the signs would be on my manager's desk. Cue all the specialists and myself scrambling to get these extra signs put up. It really wouldn't have mattered anyway--I knew I was missing those signs and requested them.
• We didn't have to make coffee for people waiting in line outside. We paid Big Apple Bagels to do that--and bring in tasty bagels so everybody could have breakfast.
• I heard several stories from people who had been at Wally World that there were fights and a purse snatching. And they did tickets for their high-end items.
• Overall, the crowd at the swamp was very orderly. As shitty as they seem at other times during the year, they can at least get through the doorbuster sale without fights or trampling each other.
• Remember how I said I'd be working in toys this year? The gods smiled on one I.P. Freleigh for once. Instead, I got to mark the end of the line for electronics checkout with a big, shiny, red balloon! Yay balloons! This saved me from having to do a lot of running, but it got a little boring sometimes just standing there with my balloon. While doing this I was also able to treat shoppers to some witty repartee:

Customer: Is there where I go to check out?
Me: Yes, if you want to check out in electronics. But since you're buying those Brett Favre Vikings T-shirts, you have to go all the way back to juniors and let everybody else in front of you.
Customer:

Customer: Hey, what if I just budge into the front of the line?
Me: Then you will not leave the store alive.

Rather drunk and/or stoned customer: Wowwwwww, is there some big sale going on today?
Me: (thinking "You're pretty stupid. You know that?")

As far as sales go--I suspect we'll beat last year's sales and probably make goal. We've been hitting our sales goals consistently since the Super Duper Uber Mega Super Stupendous Lowest Prices of the Season Sale back in October, and I saw more carts loaded over the top than I did last year.

Tonight--I get to clean up, and possibly be regaled with more stories from today.

[calulu]

Many blessings and much protection over you kind souls working on Black Friday. May your feet not ache and may your customers be jolly.

[kendiara]

/quote I know y'all are going to hate me, but working in a bar, Black Friday really doesn't affect me. /quote

Sure it does Jester All the employees getting off work and stopping by to forget their day!

The CFO decided not to come today, but to come tomorrow...I missed out meeting the DM/VP by them not arriving before my shift ended. However got a great bit of suckage from Home Office.

Some brilliant guy printed and mailed a flyer saying that we would be open at 8am on Saturday instead of regular opening at 9am. So entire company shifts up an extra hour, not a big deal. Well its The Iron Bowl today and so now they decided that we have to open at 7am and rerun the early bird specials from today because we are going to lost a lot of people because of the game. That starts at 1:30pm...

[XCashier]

I'm working at the fabric store, 2-10:30. They decided to open the place at 6 AM this morning; I hope everything went okay for my coworkers.

On the positive side, several people are bringing goodies to the break room as sort of a potluck, including me. A good nosh does ease the stress a bit.

BBL to let you know how things turned out.

[Not_a_Miracleworker]

Working at a Paper we get to come in the day after Thanksgiving and report on all the crazy.

This is second-hand from a co-worker:

They went to the Walmart here in town at 4am for a sale that was supposed to start at 5am. This store is open 24 hours - including Thanksgiving day - as in they've been OPEN since YESTERDAY. Does anyone else see the problem with the math here? So yeah, by the time she got there (when the sale was supposed to start) they were cleaned out of everything, because everyone had been there EARLIER. I'm not sure which is more wee-todd-id, my co-worker for going to Hell-mart on BlackFriday in the first place, or their management for not thinking "oh, hey we should probably close the doors until the sale actually starts". Did they assume people would WAIT???!!!! WTMF??

I hate this day. I worked retail before I got a job designing. I feel for all of you who have to go out and brave the mass of stupid. Goddess grant you serenity.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

Things weren't too bad at the games store this morning but thank god I wasn't at the Wal-Mart across the way! The entire parking lot was FULL (which is a feat in and of itself when you conisder how gigantic a Wal-mart parking lot usually is) as were lots from several businesses adjacent to the Wal-Mart and there was even overflow traffic in the lot for my plaza which was ACROSS the street from Wal-Mart. This was at about 5:30 am.

little bits of suck here and there...

Not such a bright idea...

We had several huge bins of merchandise, one of which was specifically for products under $25. On top of that, SOME of these lower priced products were 50% off but not all were. I think at least 10 SCs got peeved at me because they assumed the whole bin was 50% off and flipped out when the item rang up wrong at the register.

...Read the fine print people...

Had no fewer than 7 people flashing Iphones in my face wanting me to give them some deal advertised on our website. Too bad they missed the print that stated "WEB special only" . Several of them took their case to our manager, who promptly shot them all down as it is clearly displayed on multiple signs in our store that we don't support online offers.

"But it's in the BIN!"

We've seen this one a lot on CS.com, this man was majorly upset because a $49.99 headset had somehow found its way into our "$25 and under bin". After going around in circles with me on how I couldn't discount it because it wasn't actually one of the items included in that bin, he demanded a manager. They spent 5 minutes arguing about it (while a line is building behind the guy) before my manager finally caved and gave him the headset for $25. Grrrr...

To the lady who bitched at me about how we DON'T price match...

Allow me to respond to each of your inquiries:

- No we don't price match
- Oh the game is $10 less at Target? Well, sorry can't do anything about that.
- I am aware Target and Wal-Mart and Best Buy price match
- We do not price match because we do not have other products to make profit margin up on, we only sell games and accessories
- No, our manager won't price match.
- No, our district manager won't price match.
- No, it's not "completely stupid" that we don't price match, in fact it makes my life a lot easier.

Oh and as a final bit of Black Friday fun, I found this picture accompanying a news story on Black Friday and it just demands a funny caption. See what you can do with it.



Lady Behind the black guy: I've been here for two hours and I'm over it, should I run this guy down and make a mad dash for the register?

[calulu]

Look at their faces. They all look so unhappy. Missing the whole point of Christmas. It ain't about shopping.

[Android Kaeli]

It actually wasn't too bad today even at my 7 am to 2 pm shift, only had two problems with customers: one who couldn't understand that I, nor anyone else that was working, did NOT have a coupon to give to her, and the person on the phone that didn't understand that we are NOT a message service and could not write down the message for someone else. Besides, we were too busy to do anything of sort, if it hadn't been Black Friday and wasn't busy, yeah sure I would've.

Only was ten minutes late for my lunch, was the person who gave breaks to cashiers. The best part? I don't have to be back to work until Monday

[Glutton4Punishment]

15 hours down 5 to go. Please someone put me out of my misery.

[Amina516]

You work at the hospital? Wow that makes you my roommate's cousin's best friend's great aunt's grandkid's coworker.

Cool...so we're related then??

Anyhow, i avoided all stores but had a RIDICULOUSLY busy night @ the hospital. Why you ask? B/c several people who ate too damn much already decided to KEEP eating and end up @ the hospital around midnight with "chest pain" and shortness of breath....Duh.

Glad to hear everyones alive!!