Black Friday Debriefing Thread 2009

[Jester]

/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!

I should have known not to make that comment.

I was SLAMMED today at The Bar. I rocked it, of course, and made nice fundage, but it just wiped me out. I still have not started on the chili I need to cook tonight, and it's already past 11 pm.

So after work I thought I would head to Sears and check out their sale. I knew it wouldn't be the major sale stuff, but I have been thinking of updating my TV from the ancient 19" wheezer it is to a flat screen of a not huge but still decent size (still has to fit in my entertainment center, so 22" or 26" max), and was hoping they would have good deals on said TV's.

Well....the sizes I wanted weren't on sale AT ALL.

And as I was leaving work, one of my coworkers mentioned that the local Sears had actually opened for today at 4 am. Meaning that I could have gone this morning before work, since I was up early screwing around on the computer, and maybe then I would have gotten a deal. Meh.

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.

"Damn right it's Black Friday. We've got a black President, and I'm first in line. HELL yes!"

[Amina516]

Jester...you win.. LMAO.

[mikoyan29]

Thank god this "Black Friday" is non-existent in the UK... well, as far as I know. What's the logic behind it anyway? Why plage all retailers at this exact time of the year? Why not shop during one of the other 360 or so days in the year?

...and speaking of baristas in green serving coffee at 3; they're clearly there to appeal to the masses before the stores open. Clever idea.

Well traditionally (up to about a few years ago), Thanksgiving was the start of Christmas season. You wouldn't hear Christmas music until then. stores would do their decorations and reveal them the day after. Then someone got the brilliant idea of having sales on the day after Thanksgiving. and it's been all downhill since.

[jackfaire]

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

It was meant to be. Well nothing.

(My shot at the caption thing)

*Sings* I am a loser baby so somebody kill me!

Doc Webster saved my life. I mean that.

People are fools I picked up a blender three days ago for 20 bucks. Not because I was looking either I have been needing one for awhile glimpsed it snatched it bought it and what do you know no freaking lines.

Also I saw at least two cars driving on the bloody train tracks because apparently since they share the same road they can ignore the two ton train that takes two freaking blocks to stop.

[Retail Associate]

I got lucky this year. Didn't have to be at the hellhole store until 3:30PM Thanksgiving Day and 8:00AM Black Friday. By the time I got there both days the crazies were mostly gone. Our busiest day of the weekend will probably be tomorrow (Sat) and I don't have to be there til 2:30PM. The best part of it all...I never once had to go to the jewelry counter.

I think I may request these shifts every Thanksgiving weekend from now on.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Okay, a few more newsy news niblets from my Black Friday:

First off, a big Eff You to most of the hardlines specialists, who evidently decided as a group to not do anything yesterday. All Richard Simmons did in electronics was hide in the corner, instead of making himself useful by getting things out of the cabinets so the other people back there could be free to ring up customers. The domestics specialist just stood like a statue over in furniture with an "I want to kill the entire world" look plastered on her face. Housewares specialist wouldn't even run to the back to bring out stuff as it was selling. She called one of us stock monkeys to do it, or handed us a list of SKUs.

You know, with all the unpacking and sorting and staging of merchandise we did this week, we made it stupid easy for them to go find their stuff and bring it out as it was selling. And the specialists couldn't even do that. They deserve no credit for our sales yesterday. They were quite good--almost $30,000 over forecast--but they could've been better had a few more people been on the ball.

I really wish I had been in domestics to see this fascinating bit of self-pwnage. Remember the stuff stashed down an aisle I mentioned earlier? It turns out the person who stashed it was one of the first in the door yesterday. She went right to the spot where she left her stash--and found it completely gone. Panic-stricken, she then began flinging open the doors of our display storage cabinets in furniture, but didn't find any of her stuff in there. This caused to shriek, and I quote, "SHIT!!" across the entire store.

People weren't too happy with the way other stores in town were handling their Black Friday crowds. We overheard complaints about Kohls and Menards being disorganized messes, and complements to us because we organized the checkout lines and had people in those lines leave spaces so other shoppers could get through. Also, Wally World was worse than I realized. Apparently shoppers who were there saw people getting shoved into merchandise displays, along with the fighting and purse-snatching I mentioned earlier. That company better get its shit together with regard to security and crowd control. Otherwise, it ain't going to be a question of whether or not somebody else gets killed in one of their stores on Black Friday. It's going to be a question of when.

I got my picture in the paper. Maybe not really. On their website is a collection of photos their photographer took in stores around town yesterday. In one of the pictures, I'm with a co-worker trying to get the line to go back the right way. I'm hidden behind somebody at the camera counter, but I promise I'm there! There's another picture where you can't see me, but you can see my red balloon.

Finally, I'm done with working third shift for the foreseeable future. I don't have to be back to work until Monday. So I will spend the weekend sleeping, eating, and watching football. And hanging out here, of course.

[calulu]

I trekked out to Pig Fart (Wal Mart) around 9 pm because I was out of yarn for a Christmas present I'm knitting. Whattaya know! Just a handful of people and the displays were not trashed! I ended up getting some things for the house that were on sale besides the yarn. Talked to the cashier and she told me it was only crazy till about 10 am. Apparently the 3 am to 10 am crowd was frantic and the rest of the day very average.

[EricKei]

My BFriday was...anticlimactic. I was at the office from 8 til 1, then the GameStore 3 to 11. I'm told that we were really busy as expected in the AM for the doorbuster sale (SM had to be there for 5am), but once I got there, it was just "normal busy" in spurts. There were times when there were only 2 or 3 customers in the store at all, it was kinda creepy. No SC's then, nobody relayed any stories to me...yet...And they had energy drinks and half of a cookie cake for us. We even had game systems to sell. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, SUGAR!

[simplyanother]

Can I vent about relatively new seasonal co-workers who don't know where ANYTHING is....and the ...uh what's the word..."NOT FAIR!!!!"ness of them being on the floor, and me being stuck at a damned register most of the day?

I heard customers complaining about them just answering "I don't know" to questions, and not even making an attempt to finding out. At least when I say "I don't know" it is followed up by "let me ask" and me...ya know finding out.

Of course they're just generally useless anyway. @@

[Rine]

I had an okay day yesterday. The displays were absolutely trashed when I came in...I have never seen the children's department look SO awful. Why can't people shop without destroying everything?

Had only two people come in and complain about doorbusters after doorbusters went off sale.

Sold out of tons of merchandise, looong lines, but most people were upbeat. We had "cac captains" at all cacs to manage the lines and people said we were very organized.

Super busy day and some people even said that my store was busier than Target, which was a shock! Excellent day in sales for the store--we already had double digit increases for the year and it looks like we are going to have a great year over all!

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

One more thing I forgot to mention:

Cashiers--when the store manager is going over important information and procedures fifteen minutes before we open, FFS put on your listening ears instead of chatting, gossiping and giggling amongst yourselves!

The information being covered was carryout procedures during the morning. They were being done out the vendor door in the backroom, so this meant customer were to be directed to the side of the store to pick up their merchandise. If the customer presented a colored pull tag, the cashier was supposed to just send the customer around to the vendor door. If they presented a regular pull tag, they had to call the backroom to tell them what item(s) was needed. They were not supposed to page carryouts over the PA or have customers wait at the front of the store.

This was so important, another one of the managers basically repeated this after store manager finished. There was also a reminder note about this posted at every register.

And yet, what did I hear about 30 minutes into the craziness? Some cashier paging a carryout over the PA. Then later somebody else got sent up front to wait for their carryout, and predictably they got forgotten about, until they asked one of the people at the service desk when they would be getting their barstools. This happened a couple other times after I left as well.

When it's being drilled into your head that carryout procedures are going to change, it really needs to sink in.

[wolfie]

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

Don't know about bands, but there's a song called "Beer Thirty".

[lineswine]

Thank god this "Black Friday" is non-existent in the UK... well, as far as I know.

Nope, instead we have the infamous "Boxing Day" sales a.k.a. 26th December.
Not quite to the infamy of Black Friday, but still brings out its' fair share of SCs, EWs etc.

[simplyanother]

If they presented a regular pull tag, they had to call the backroom to tell them what item(s) was needed.

We don't have big stuff like furniture and what not, but we do have stuff that customers just can't carry, or get to that are locked up. We had a system where someone was posted in the classroom with the major locked up stuff, and we were to call the classroom to get them to bring it to us.

Until the DM showed up and decided that it would be better for them to hand carts to people. So we had to page over the PA, and no one told us who to page.

And for Christmas trees, no one told the new people how to page for a tree "Soandso, I need tree number 64 to register 5" repeated a couple of times, nor told ANY OF US WHO was the designated tree getter.


Gah.

My Significant other tells me I should just get a job at the Evil Happy Face. I can BARELY tolerate the BS that goes on at Glitter Hell, I don't know how he thinks I'd survive working for the Evil Happy Face.

[Summerfly413]

My black friday wasn't that bad at all! I was really surprised. And for some reason I was in a good mood too.

The main annoyance was almost EVERY TIME someone asked me if we had X christmas tree, it was NEVER out on the floor. I kept having to go to the upstairs stockroom and get trees down and drag them back through the store.

No one wanted any of the tons of trees we had out. It was ALWAYS one that wasn't out.

And not to mention, I JUST found out we had christmas stock upstairs yesterday, and I've been working in the seasonal section for a week! I hate the lack of communication in the store.

I saw a ton of employees I've never seen before, or I've only seen a couple of times.

The store didn't seem very busy to me at all. I even had downtime and time to straighten.

Today was a LOT busier than yesterday and I can't figure out why. My department as well as the store was packed. And it didn't help that we were putting out stock in crowds of people. Took most of the day!

-----
Oh and today after looking in the stockroom for stuff to fill empty spaces I go back to seasonal and a woman asks for help. We go to look at the boxed trees and she says to me "Did you know that man was taking the little tree from the display?"

I reply that I don't and go back over to the man. He took a 3 1/2 or 4 foot fiber-optic tree from out of the display, unplugged it and all, and put it in his cart.

I said to him "Umm...sir? Sir! I need that to go back in there please. It's a display, we can't sell it."

And his reply is "Oh well there was no one around." Meaning that no one was around to help him, because I had been in the back.
If he had even walked to the left 7 feet and used his eyes he could've seen we had the trees in boxes by the regular christmas trees.
He didn't even TRY to find the tree. So what does he do? Go into the display area(not much...just surrounded by garden stones, but still...) and take out the display! Ugh, it bothered me so much!