Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is historically the busiest retail shopping days of the year. Many consider it the "official" beginning to the holiday season. Most retailers will open very early… we opened at 5:00am.
Yesterday was my fifth Black Friday with the company, second with the store I’m currently at. It’s always extremely busy each year on this day… however yesterday; we had more people than ever! This is the first year we weren’t able to fit everyone waiting outside to get in into the store at the same time. We had to let people into the store in shifts. There was a line just to get into the store for over three hours!
To prepare for the considerably substantial number of people shopping with us, especially early in the morning, we made maps of the store, vouchers for really hot ad items that we had a limited quantity of, etc…
Here’s how crazy some of the people were this year waiting to get in… I had Sean, one of my merchandise managers, go outside to hand out maps of the store. The first thing he hears as he gets out the door is two female customers arguing… more accurately, he heard, “Fuck you, you skanky ho! I’ll kick you’re fucking ass!”
Joe, one of the sales managers, had to deal with two other customers fighting in line to get. One customer who did not get voucher for a $200 laptop told another customer who did get a voucher that she and her boyfriend would kill her if she bought the laptop. Luckily the police showed up almost immediately. Unfortunately, the small city of Sunset Valley only had one police officer on duty, so he had to call the county Sheriff’s office to come out too. So for the first several hours of the morning, we had police on crowd control.
Overall, besides the insane amount of people running around the store all day long, the day ran quite smoothly. Even so… my version of hell would be a continuous Black Friday for eternity!
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6 comments:
Gosh, that sounds horrible!
Heheh, I'm kind-of basking in smugness after reading that. We don't have Thanksgiving over here, so there's none of that gubbins (although they did turn the Christmas Lights on this week) and because so many of our customers who come to my shop are ordering things in, by this point they're resigned to the fact that they won't see their order before Christmas and business is now beginning to calm down!
I can't decide whether to say "oh you poor thing, that sounds horrible" or "nya nya nyanyanyaah!"
:D
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Elemmaciltur - I'll admit that the day had certain aspects of anguish written all over it, but overall it was more entertaining than anything else. :-D
The Barlow - LOL! You would think that people here would realize that there are going to be massive lines and product shortages because of the time of year, but they don't. I guarantee that we have people shopping on December 24 and get pissed off when something they want is sold out.
I can't decide whether to say "oh you poor thing, that sounds horrible" or "nya nya nyanyanyaah!"
Go with the first! LOL! :-P
People are crazy - I stayed home all weekend. I wasn't about to get involved with the crazies.
im pretty sure the SAT before xmas is the busiest. well maybe it is not but i am sure i read that in the news last week.
Celtgirl - No kidding... when I'm out of retail, I will not willing go anywhere on Black Friday! Insane and stupid people in very large numbers is never good... that's how Dubya got elected!
LGL - Black Friday is typically the busiest shopping day of the year... last year actually turned out to be the Saturday after Black Friday that was the busiest. I agree with you for this year since Christmas falls on a Sunday... I feel that Christmas Eve may be the busiest shopping day for this year.
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