Black Friday Debriefing Thread 2010

[Legal Eagle]

[QUOTE=
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.
.[/QUOTE]



This is not a complaint against the poster, but at the company.

Notonly is this an very easy way to piss off a large number of people but depending on the phrasing & state the stores are based in, this could actually be false advertising (as in a legal matter not just a customer randomly throwing the phrase around)

[Hyena Dandy]

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.

That ad made me positively sick to my stomach... One, because NOBODY likes working black friday, but additionally, that ad might make people think that people DO love working black friday.

I wanted to punch my TV when I saw that.

[LadyAndreca]

The managers were actually more trouble than the customers this year. I only had one bad customer, and several small annoyances that were over quickly. The head cashiers, however, were extremely high-strung and taking it all out on the cashiers. So it was a loooooong 12-hour shift, especially since they decided I'd be the cashier to stay open until all customers were out.

Manager tales

- The store manager was wandering around with a "TGIBF: Thank Goodness It's BLACK Friday!" shirt on. He loooves the crazy busy days.

- As I mentioned in MiM, one of the head cashiers tried to put a cashier with a pine allergy and doctor's note out in the garden register, surrounded by hundreds of trees and wreaths and such...

- The head cashiers kept moving up people's breaks "to get them out of the way", ignoring the fact that that would leave many of us ending the day with 3-4 hour stretches with no breaks left, after 12-hour shifts.

Customer tales

- A customer got into our tiny back room, which had been closed off most of the day, looking at the pallets of oil heaters we had waiting to go onto the sales floor. Being the Orange Apron, most all of our overstock is...overhead. The back room is just for unloading and storing the forklifts, really. He wasn't sucky, just lost, and happy to be redirected to the correct area.

- At 8:30 PM, a customer was staring at the battery case. When I approached him, he wanted to know where the 30-pack of Duracell AAs for $5 we'd advertised was. I had to tell him we'd sold out of those hours ago. Cue your standard "Blargle blargle! False advertising!" We opened at 5 AM, but he comes in half an hour until closing expecting us to still have that? (We'd had a couple pallets and it took us until about 2ish to sell out.)

- Several customers would bring their items to the register, then ask for some doorbuster they couldn't find, and leave their entire purchase at the register to go get their item. One in particular wouldn't believe that a toolbox would be in the aisle (where it belongs) instead of on a display pallet. Thank goodness we have a 'suspend' button!

- We closed at 9. I had one gentleman wanting help ask when we were closed, then respond "Oh, you're closed? I'll just come back tomorrow, it's fine." Him, I wanted to hug. The couple still debating whether they wanted a drill at 9:20? Them, I wanted to scream at. And the guy who was still in the store after I'd clocked out at 9:30? I don't know what they did with him. I couldn't ring him up.

[Food Lady]

Wow. I'm surprised cashiers were getting sent home from some of these stores. We didn't make sales, either, but the foot traffic and neediness kept up. So when I left there were, not surprisingly, 15 carts of gobacks left, give or take. The store was still a mess and the service desk looked like a tornado hit it. It was BF, we ran our butts off, and for once in my career there the time actually went by fast enough to turn my head. (Usually it totally drags for me.) So why are the managers gonna get written up? (I know; I talked to them). Because our SM is a total corporate lackey with no sense of reality when it comes to our mall-shopping, store-trashing sucktomers. And bonus, as I drove around the other side of the mall upon leaving, I saw 4 of our carts abandoned in the parking lot. They're not supposed to leave the store, and we didn't have enough for everyone.

[blas]

My bf, bless his little heart, isn't the brightest bulb on the tree.....and because he wanted his check cashed right meow instead of waiting until later in the morning Friday, he figured it best to go to Wal-Mart at 5 am.

So I stayed warm in bed in my underoos, and he bundled up and braved the icy roads and the below zero windchill and went to our local ghetto-mart (this Wal-Mart is the epitomy of gross) and it was beyond crazy busy.

I think he may have learned his lesson, temporarily.

[yizuman]

Black Friday


The Day After Black Friday...

Yiz

[Rine]

My store didn't meet the sales goal -- but we came close. We were hella busy, though.

Big sellers were girls jeans @ 4.99, women's fleece, men's jeans, tvs, appliances, etc. Last year's big sellers were some down comforters and this year they weren't even touched.

Had very few problems, aside from dealing with an angry, yelling customer on the phone. A cashier left an ink tag on his jacket and he lives an hour away...but you know, cussing me out isn't going to make that ink tag come off any faster. I passed it off to the manager.

Store was trashed; didn't really get it cleaned by the time the lights went out.

Housewares: Keurig Single Cup coffee makers.

@Irv:

I love those things. We have the 18 count boxes priced at 8.99. I don't drink a lot of coffee, so brewing a whole pot is useless 'cause I just want one cup. I love my little red one that I bought. Managed to score the display at my store and bought it for $40.

Ours are selling very well. Cuisinart and Bosch are getting in on the single cup bandwagon, too.

[Can I Help Your A$$?]

So, I came back to work today to TWO TRUCKS. As the "zone captain" of the dollar bins, I had FIVE PALLETS of stock unloaded for me. The BF crowd really did a number on the dollar bins, and as I left, they began ripping it all apart again. It took four hours to finish, luckily, since most of it went right back on pallets for backstock.

We finished the 2400 piece truck in 6 or so hours. Not too terrible, and I'll be looking forward to that paycheck. Maybe there'll be some left for presents this time, maybe not. I hope maybe. I have very little Christmas shopping done.

[XCashier]

- The store manager was wandering around with a "TGIBF: Thank Goodness It's BLACK Friday!" shirt on. He loooves the crazy busy days.

Is your manager named Stuart by any chance?!

- As I mentioned in MiM, one of the head cashiers tried to put a cashier with a pine allergy and doctor's note out in the garden register,
surrounded by hundreds of trees and wreaths and such...

Your head cashier does realize the liability the store could face if the cashier gets severely ill from all the pine, right? As in, big $$$$$!
Seriously, how stupid can one get?!

[LadyAndreca]

Is your manager named Stuart by any chance?!

Your head cashier does realize the liability the store could face if the cashier gets severely ill from all the pine, right? As in, big $$$$$!
Seriously, how stupid can one get?!

*laugh* No, our manager's no Stuart. He's quite human, and a generally nice guy. He just loves people and loves making people happy, and the big sales days get him super energized.

And the head cashier was being an ass. She didn't care that J was allergic and had a note. When district said they wanted all people working all registers, they didn't mean "surround a cashier with things she's allergic to" or "put the anemic cashier with poor circulation at the outside register in the winter" (we have one of those too).

One thing I forgot to put in my list, from management:

Yes, we want to go insane
Black Friday means it's time for holiday music. It's the same stale, recycled songs from last year, and the same uninspired variations of the songs, played in a loop until I cannot stand some of my favorite classics from childhood anymore. In a 12-hour shift, I KNOW I heard some songs four times.

Well, at some point around noon, someone turned the music system WAY up. You could not hear pages, the music was so loud. After about 15 minutes, they turned it back down, but not to the unobtrusive level it HAD been at.

*sigh* It had been turned down in mid-December last year because we were all going insane from the Christmas music THEN.

[ShootMePlease]

Now that I've somewhat recovered from the tornado that was Black Friday at the Buy of Best I will give a rundown of my day :

Arrived around 2. There were at least 300 folks already there.
2AM-4:45AM - Set up Doorbuster items and put up prices as fast as I could.
5AM - Welcomed hundreds of yahoos. Handed out flyers.
5AM - 9AM - Helped said yahoos finding items they desired. Restocked when needed.
9AM - 9:15 AM - Had only really sucky customer of the day. He wanted to argue that since a price for a different item was directly below the item he wanted he should get it for that price, even though tag clearly says it's for another item. I explain to him that's not possible. He tells me he's gonna try anyway. Because he's the customer. I wish him luck on his endeavor.
9:15AM - 9:45AM - Lunch. Although it's a bit weird to eat pizza and pasta in the morning.
9:45AM - 12PM - Dealt with yahoos who wanted to dump unwanted items on the cart on the floor as well as every other place they didn't belong. I will never understand how people can be such pigs and slobs.
12PM - Clocked out. Bye Bye, Black Friday !!

Overall, it wasn't as bad as years past. There seemed to be A LOT more people than before. The only thing that gets me is the slob mentality of these folks. I also don't like 4 people asking me questions at the same time. I know you heard the first person ask me something. So shut your mouth and wait your turn !!

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Yes, we want to go insane
Black Friday means it's time for holiday music. It's the same stale, recycled songs from last year, and the same uninspired variations of the songs, played in a loop until I cannot stand some of my favorite classics from childhood anymore. In a 12-hour shift, I KNOW I heard some songs four times.

Well, at some point around noon, someone turned the music system WAY up. You could not hear pages, the music was so loud. After about 15 minutes, they turned it back down, but not to the unobtrusive level it HAD been at.

*sigh* It had been turned down in mid-December last year because we were all going insane from the Christmas music THEN.

Believe it or cram it, the Christmas music at the swamp got even worse this year.

It's all moldy old Christmas music by mostly dead people. Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, Barbara Streisand and so forth. Not a mix of older and more contemporary Christmas music by current artists.

I swear it was putting me to sleep last night. Too bad there aren't any display radios in electronics I could've ganked for the night.

[Department stores *sigh*]

I am so glad we dont have a PA system Which means no Christmas music

[Jay 2K Winger]

Day Two of Black Friday Weekend

Nowhere near as busy as we were yesterday. Only two real examples of Suck I can think of.

Rain Checks?
Guy picks up one of our Black Friday Weekend coupon books and goes to hunt for the "ThomasThomas Extra Extra Large" GPS system that we have on sale. We have none left. (Seriously, we sold them all yesterday.)

SC: "You have any of these left?"
J2K: "Probably not. It was a big seller yesterday."
SC: "So, can I get a rain check for it?"
J2K: "Nope. It says 'while supplies last.'"

MOD MS was nearby and heard the exchange.

MS: "We cannot give rain checks on Black Friday items."

And SC walks off, without the GPS he originally wanted. (I think he later purchased another brand of GPS.)

You Need To Control The Line
So this Crotchety Older Guy had purchased a two-cart order (well, one cart plus a cart for the electronics item he had), only he'd gotten ahead of his wife, who also had the receipt. As a couple more customers had ended up between COG and his wife, and more customers were coming up behind COGWife, I quickly checked the receipts of the customers between COG and COGWife.

Well, he didn't seem to like the fact that people had formed a line in an orderly fashion, or perhaps didn't like that I was letting people "cut" the line by checking them before him.

COG: "People need to learn to respect the line."

and then he says to me,

COG: "You need to control the line better."

I just ignored him, checked his receipt, and bid him farewell. (While mentally giving him the finger.)

[RetailDemon]

My busiest was actually Wednesday when a VERY popular bag style retired certain patterns. Friday was fairly calm as we are a small store and people were going to the big department store to get TV's for $300. Today (Saturday) was kind of craxy, though.