Black Friday Debriefing Thread 2010

[MiddleofNowhere]

Black Friday Debriefing 2010

My Black Friday...

Consisted of waking up at 3:15 a.m. to get to work by 5 a.m. (I lucked out - we opened at midnight)

Got the update when I arrived at 5 a.m. to find out the cops had already been out to my store once - some guy took a poke at his girlfriend/wife/friend with benefits and got hauled away in some nice shiny bracelets

At around 9 a.m., a lady came to me in tears, 'Had I seen a 'gamejoint' bag, it had her Christmas X Box in it.' I hadn't, alerted management, they alerted LP. Cameras reviewed and found woman had inadvertently set the bag down (dumb move on her part) and another customer (a woman) saw her do it. Second woman picked bag up, gave to her 14 year old son and sent him out to put in their car. Then continued to shop in our store. Yup, dumb cow got arrested. Way to show your son some holiday cheer and how to be a great parent (not) in one fell swoop.

Two code browns in the ladies bathroom throughout the day. Need I say more?

Had about eight bazillion people ask me, 'Is "Big Name Brand Technical Brand" on sale?' Um, no. It doesn't go on sale, except of course the poopy colors no one wants. Was it in our ad on sale? No.

Had about 4 bazillion people tell me, 'Hi, I'm looking for a "brand' black jacket.' Ya know folks, need a bit more info. "Brand" makes and we carry no less than 16 black jacket styles. Don't make the cat butt face because I can't read your christmas list makers mind. At least give me a pricepoint for pete's sake. I can usually narrow it down to two options.

Please, for the love of god, take your infant/toddler/small child home and let them sleep. Accompanying your holiday shopping for 8+ hours is not my idea of a good time, let alone someone who is hungry/tired/overstimulated.

And folks, if you feel the need to have a coffee klatch and stand there for 30 minutes shooting the breeze, we have places you can do that so you are not blocking other customers from getting to their Christmas goodies. Planting your ass in front of one of our best selling coats this time of year is only going to earn you me trying to (rather obtrustively) straighten the rack in an effort to make you move your ass to our soda fountain where people are encouraged to chat at not move. Here on the sales floor, not so much.

And seriously, you folks that ask me for a very specific item - give me brand, style, size and color and I find it for you - please, if you tell me you're just looking today, I have the right to beat you over the head with a tack hammer because you are an IDIOT!

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

Black friday at the games store was probably a bit busier than last year. It all went pretty smoothly, with a few minor hiccups:

Customer Fail

Me: (to who I think is next in line) Are you ready to check out?
Cranky woman who was next in line at the register next to mine: I've been ready for ten minutes now!
And with that she immediately slides over to my line and gets an earful from the dude who would have been next. Strangely my manager let the woman get away with the line jump and made me ring her up, further pissing off the guy who would have been next.

Coworker Fail

We have, as always some holiday hires. Usually we try to have these folks start training in early October, I guess corporate opted to save some payroll this year and we didn't start them until the first week of November. One guy didn't start until LAST WEEK.

And, due to a mistake he made ringing up a purchase today, he let a customer walk out the door with nearly $300 in "free" merchandise. I believe he might be canned for that one but who knows.

Corporate Fail

How to piss off your customers and employees at the same time:

1. Print a flyer advertising a DSi bundle that's actually a pretty good deal and indicate there will be a minimum of 10 per store.
2. Only actually send THREE per store
3. Forget to tell anyone about the discrepancy.

Yeah, it was fun dealing with people upset over this particular mix up.

[ralerin]

I made the mistake of eating something with milk and no lactose pills so I was a bit woozy and headachy when I went in. The lines weren't too bad, to be honest but we had at least 200 popcorn tins sold since yesterday and today because they're less than $4.

For some ungodly reason SM had set up a fuzzy musical light up snowman on top of the chocolate display near the middle of the store. It was cute and adorable for fifteen minutes. However if there is one thing I hate it is hearing songs more than once in a particular day or week unless I crave hearing that song and even then I will not play it more than once on a particular day. The exception to that is Christmas carols but they need to vary enough/need to have enough time in between them so I don't go batty.

The musical snowman thing played fifteen different Christmas carols on repeat and was so loud and shrill that it drowned out the muzak playing in the store with its obnoxiousness. It was giving me a headache. When I asked if I could turn it off I was snapped at and told to let it play. Even when the customers complained? "Let it play." Cashiers S1 and K were getting whiny and complainy too but they were snapped at too.

When SM left I finally yanked it down and hit the off switch. Blessed, blessed, blessed silence. If I had had the forethought and more time I would have unscrewed the battery case bottom of all ten snowmen, flipped the batteries around so it didn't work anymore and then rescrewed the case back on. But I didn't, and I know I'll be subjected to its migraine induce-ingness tomorrow.

As far as actual SCs? None, actually. I swear. No one snapped or complained or whined or bitched except about the snowman.

[Sapphire Silk]

Black friday at the games store was probably a bit busier than last year. It all went pretty smoothly, with a few minor hiccups:

I saw a commercial today saying your games store was guaranteeing games would be in stock. I gasped.

Oh how I pitied you.

[ditchdj]

I can't imagine how it was for the staff at Denny's last night!

Since they were the ONLY restaurant open last night until 5am, I heard it was PACKED, hard core at 3am!

My wife had to work this morning, and a person she works with went shopping last night. She went to Denny's at 3am. The place was full. They waited 20 minutes for a table. When they placed their order they had to wait an hour-and-a-half for their food!

[Frantic Freddie]

Just duckin' in here to offer y'all some moral support,here's some enchiladas & adult beverages.

[Mnemjian]

I saw the WORST commercial today for Big Yellow Tag. The employee was positively gushing over how much she LOVES working on Black Friday and how she will devote her entire day to helping you find great gifts or some nonsense. She said "I just looooooove Black Friday!" about ten times. It was pretty ridiculous. Sounds like that ad agency needs to get a grip on reality.

[Mytical]

To those who worked Black Friday..I am sorry you had to endure that. I have my own tale about it, cause I got stuck helping somebody shop. Even almost got arrested, but that is a tale for Sightings.

[Racket_Man]

. Line, line, everywhere a line, blocking up the aisles and breaking my mind...oops, sorry. But yeah, same , different year.

Great song paraody, but if we could JUST get SC's to remember the Original version and PAY ATTENTION.

Pizza place was BUSY tonight. so much so that I was called in early.

[b2addm]

I worked all day long. The company I work for doesn't have any crazy sales so we weren't too busy. Busier than normal, but far better than I expected it to be.

The worst part of my day is that we had to unload our truck today.

[appliance god]

My wife saw Macy's opening at 4am on our news in NZ, with 7000 shoppers. She feels for all of you.......

[RetailSlave]

We actually have multiple sales at the little m...a Thanksgiving sale that starts at 6am, Black Friday (5am) and Super Saturday (6am). I work 3rd shift so we have to prepare for the sales (cleaning, stocking bags, register and Catalina tape, putting out the new ads at the right time) and then work the first couple hours of the sales.
Our sales included 8gb and 32gb Ipod Touches, a guaranteed number per store. unfortunately Tuesday night/Wednesday early am someone broke into our media backroom and made off with a bunch of them...a total of $2700. So unhappy customers, big loss for us.
We also had the Monster High dolls in our Thursday sale for $10 each (avery hot item for some reason). The sale started and we had parents coming up asking where the dolls were..we called back to the GM dept and were told 3 different locations...no dolls in any of them. A few minutes later we found out why when a customer came up with the entire skid of dolls in a couple of carts. He told us that he was going to get them and sell them on ebay and craigslist for a profit. Our Service Coordinator was outraged....parents were looking to buy those for their kids' Christmas and this guy was selfishly taking the entire skid so he could sell them for $30 each online! She went to the manager and was told that since there wasn't a limit in the ad that we could do nothing and we had to sell them to the guy. He had been in earlier in the month and had bought a bunch of them then too. Our greeter pointed out that our ad says that we have the right to limit purchases to normal retail quantities and that we could have said "a full skid of dolls is NOT normal retail quantities" esp since he had stated that be was buying them to resell online.

Woman came in Thursday night...we had a Wii bundle in our Super Saturday ad for $199 plus a $50 Catalina coupon off your next purchase plus "Santa bucks" that would take an additional $20 off. She gave us a sob story about how her son was 12 and in a wheelchair and she didn't want to bring him into the crowds so she wanted to know if she could go ahead and purchase it and get the sale price right now. We told her no, it wouldn't be good until Saturday at 6am. Then she wanted to know if she could buy it at full price, then come in Saturday morning and return it and rebuy it at the sale price. We told her they didn't encourage that...she wanted to talk to a manager. Manager told her the same thing..but she still insisted on buying the thing....she said, "You can't stop me from returning it at rebuying it on Saturday." I told our day manager and the women who will be working Service desk Saturday what had happened and suggested the following.. She can return the Wii bundle on Saturday...but she can't just turn around and rebuy it then and there. She will be informed that it has to be returned to stock and that if she wants to purchase one she will have to go back to Electronics and stand in line to purchase it. Then put it in the return bin behind the service desk and not send it back immediately. They agreed that it would be within store policy to do so and would tell our Media manager.
Black Friday was pretty slow..we actually had cashiers standing around doing nothing. We did have some trouble before the sale because no one had taken down the signs in fashions/shoes from the Thursday sale, so we had angry customers demanding we honor the buy one get one for $1 on shoes.
Only sucky customers I encountered before I left was one who was trying to tell us that a manager told her she could use the 15% off any one general merchandise item coupon on a Doorbuster item...when it clearly stated in large letters NOT INCLUDING DOORBUSTER ITEMS. She said "he" said...we only had one male manager on the floor and he was back in Media behind the counter..she had nothing from Media. I told her I couldn't honor it..fortunately she had other items that it did count on, but she did get testy because the more expensive items were Doorbusters.
Another woman had a couple of DVDs that she said were supposed to be $8but were ringing up at $19.99..according to the ad the $8 DVDs would have an orange sticker. These had orange stickers, but they had obviously been peeled off and stuck on again. They were also relatively new release and the ad DVDs were older ones. I told the cashier to call the Media manager and ask if Marmaduke was one of the orange sticker DVDs. The manager said NO, so she was told that those were not the DVDs in the ad. She called the cashier a few choice names, said that she didn't want any of her stuff and stomped out.
The last customer came up right before I was getting off...she had a Dickies jacket that was ringing up $64.99 (it was in the weekly ad for that price, $10 off regular price)..she said there was a sign that said 30% off. I checked our Friday ad, there was a 40% off mens outerwear excluding workwear...we told her it didn't apply..she said, "Not that, there was a sign that said 30% off Dickies!" so we called the Fashion manager...she went and looked and the sign said it was off Dickies fleece...this was a heavy duck/canvas jacket. Told her that..she just insisted that we were wrong and she wanted the 30% off. I had to clock out so I left UScan and clocked out, then shopped for about 20 minutes. When I went thru Uscan to check out they told me the customer had just left..she had gone crazy and went after the Service Team Lead, the Fashion manager and the one cashier at Uscan (who is 8 months pregnant!). Crazy bitch didn't get her jacket after all that.
Enjoying a day off, then back to the grind.

[solidmetalgear19]

Pray for me (long)

So I have returned from my shift from Black Friday(4p.m.-midnight). Needless to say, it was a day met with joy, happiness, suck anger, police, EMT's and beer.

Pros

Gear gets his bounty
Once I arrived at work, I went and dug into the savings on DVD's we had and was able to nab everything I and my brother wanted.

Gear clocks in

From the start, it was all hands on deck. There was no real crazy, just a steady stream of people who needed help finding things they either had no idea where to look or could not have mastered the alphabet and common sense to locate. I was basically in 'Chicken with head cut off' mode.

We took added measures to turn off our answer center computers for the very reason that once turned on, they got swarmed with people looking to either order or locate an item. A real time waster which we put a stop to pronto

Gear get's the ladies

Had two really great customer interactions with two very attractive women. Made my day. My coworker razzed my on it. Nuff said.

Gear gains a weapon

Some guy lost their pen knife. Thing had a 3" blade on it. One man's loss is another Gears' gain. Bonus.

Cons

Shaken, not stirred. As a baby. And probably dropped on her head as well

Woman wanted to know where the Jame's bond box sets were. I showed her. She wanted to know where they were. Confusion ensued. Eventually came to the realization that she wanted to watch something that was in a box set that wasn't James Bond (or Star Trek for that matter). Essentially asking for suggestions on something new to get into. Needless to say I couldn't help her. And she said 'I had trouble communicating' When I relayed this to a co-worker he said 'What? Does she expect you to be her fucking muse?"

Gear goes on break and wishes doom upon all his coworkers

Break time comes and all I want to do is eat my cheese stake (love you Joey's!) and drink my Dew. Then I discover that said Dew (there were two bottles) has been taken by someone. Ultimately I was left with only one bottle for the night as I had intentions to drink the other later. Obviously, I was beyond pissed. You do no separate a Gear from his Dew (or any caffeine). On the plus side, I made do with left over chocolate milk that I had originally mistaken for left over dunken donuts coffee.

Wherein the Gear gets yelled at by Douche-bag McTampon
So I'm minding my own business, putting away DVD's when this guy gets all up in my face and yells at me: 'EXCUSE ME! IS SOMEONE GONNA HELP MY WIFE WHO'S CRYING ON THE GROUND?! OR ARE YOU GONNA SELL A GODDAMN VIDEO GAME'

Now, here we pause in reflection. A point about me: You NEVER raise your voice to me. That's a strait ticket for me to basically say 'Fuck you, we're done here'. And sure enough, I did just that (with the intention of getting a manager). Also, lets put this in perspective: Your wife is on the ground, in a corner, where no one can see her and you're only NOW bringing this to someone's attention rather than going and getting help? And you wonder why no one is helping? Nice work Lancelot. Nice work.

(Another note: When faced with the above yelled question, my answer is "I'm gonna sell a goddamn video game cause this isn't my problem nor my store's. It's the police dept business)

I was ready to deck the guy but I kept my cool and walked away all while saying, 'Actually I'll do both, how about that?' I was walking away, but I made sure it was loud enough to hear.

Cops come, EMT's come. Douche trades insults with other customers and my manager (who, to his credit, should have decked the guy). Make a long story short, we're fairly certain the guy put his wife up to try and screw us out of some sort of compensation with some hairbrained scheme that was based on some prior accident with a fellow customer (who I should mention most likely got arrested cause of the Douche).

Needless to say, I was pretty steamed. But was told by some of my coworkers that the look I gave the man was along the lines of a 'Fuck you' look as I took his guff before walking away, which got him even madder.

The Gear takes some pride in knowing that not only was he the bigger man, but he also caused more anger and suffering (fear the darkside).

The Gear rounds out his night

Things died down after that and I went about my business and had a cool down period. Cleaned up my department, bs-ed with my coworkers, went home and drank some booze, ate some cookies and watched '8 Mile' on cable with my brother and his new gal-pal. So over all, I feel my Black friday experience pretty much evened itself out.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

'EXCUSE ME! IS SOMEONE GONNA HELP MY WIFE WHO'S CRYING ON THE GROUND?! OR ARE YOU GONNA SELL A GODDAMN VIDEO GAME'

"Actually, I'm going to give your wife the name and number of a good divorce attorney kthnxbai."

Meanwhile.....

color me tickled pink: We made our sales goal for the day when I was certain we wouldn't. However, I am going to go out on a limb and predict next year we open at 4 am or earlier for Black Friday. Kohls being open at 3 and Maul Mart being open all night probably cut our traffic down a lot and made the difference between a good Black Friday and a great one. To me this doesn't make a difference--I'll be working overnight to get the store ready anyhow, so it ain't no thang if I gotta start at 9:30 or 8:30. But the people who are first coming in to open are probably going to be ugly.

We had a shockingly large amount of doorbuster items left over. People for whatever reason were going for a lot of things not on the doorbuster, like fleece and flannel sheets and Corelle dinnerware.

Also, right now on our facebook page we have videos of some of the buyers describing the things they brought in for the holidays. I am busting a gut watching this, because there's a good chance this time next year they won't have their jobs. Seriously, they swung and missed with almost everything.

Toys: Zhu Zhu pets and accessories (still have a ton of them left over. I think that particular fad is dying out but we're still heavily invested in them. I bet next year we'll be stocking up on Beanie Babies and pogs because those are overdue for a comeback. ) and Paper Jamz (not selling; people like to fart around on the displays but don't like to buy them).

Domestics: some ghetto-Shuggie blanket/wrap/throw thing. We had three pallets of the fuckers to start with. We have two and a half pallets in backstock. But the buyer evidently believes in them enough to declare, with great pride, that she thinks they're the best holiday gift ever.

Apparel: store brand fleece jackets for women. We hardly sold any apparel during the doorbuster and those jackets are probably shit anyway.

Housewares: Keurig Single Cup coffee makers. Really? Just...R U SRS? This is the stupidest fucking thing in the history of everything, and I include pet rocks, Geraldo's trip to Al Capone's vault, and Keith Olbermann in this statement. The coffee makers themselves start a a hundred bucks a pop, and then you pay 13 bucks, or 10 on sale, for what amounts to 18 cups of coffee. All for the "convenience" of making coffee one cup at a time. There's other coffee makers that can do the same thing for far less. I'll stick with my cheapie coffee maker, thank you very much. We haven't been able to give those coffee makers away lately. Oh, and ridiculously expensive cookware that isn't going anywhere either.

[Can I Help Your A$$?]

I was super busy cashiering at the Bullseye for maybe 2 hours at the opening (after about 15 minutes of waiting for the first people to come back with their tvs), but after that I did a lot of standing at the end of the aisle waiting for guests to come and check out. We had all the registers open, then they started sending people home. I didn't get sent home. I left at 1, and grabbed some free pizza to go. All in all, it was an easy day. The salesfloor, fitting room and backroom guys were the ones who worked the hardest. There was a collapse along with a bloodied head when someone fell and hit his head on the jewelry counter. I attribute that to the wet floor and the rushing shoppers (it was snowing outside).

I had two ladies tell me that they almost got into a fight because another "lady" told their mom to "get your fat ass out of my way." I wouldn't have blamed them.

But that was all. Mostly people bought silly things except for the 300 dollar 40 incher. Lots and lots of dvds. I always wonder why people want to own dvds when the medium is on its way out, and there are so many places like netflix to watch movies. I suppose not everyone knows how to set up their computers with their HDTVs. I decided to stop buying dvds because they're just taking up space, and I have 800 or so movies on my queue. Too many great movies to watch every day without having to store crap that's going to flake off the plastic disc in a couple years.