Black Friday - Fun and Frustration

As a veteran retail worker this day still brings floods of memories... like flash backs.   I worked retail for 12 years, 10 at Target (1995-2005) and 2 at Musicland (1992-1995).

I can honestly say that there was nothing more fun then the first few hours of that Friday morning.  Watching people run like it was some sort of game show they were on.  The smart ones left their children and the elderly home to avoid losing part of their group.  As the employees you knew you stayed out of the way for the first 20 to 30 minutes and then manned your station.  All the while wondering why you were not trained by the SWAT team in riot and crowd control tactics.

I am a survivor of the Tickle Me Elmo, Ferbies, Nintendo 64, PlayStation 2, and other "newest" or "hottest" item of the year.  I remember with the stupid Ferbie frenzies that right before the front doors were open some yelled that all the Ferbies were in the Lingerie department.  Herds of people ran over to the Lingerie department shoving and pushing just to find nightgown, robes, bras, and underwear.... no Ferbies as they would of course be in the Toy department.   I guess the smart person that said that probably had an armful at the register before the other shoppers even made it to the Toy department.  With these fun times came being yelled at, accused of hiding items, ran into, threatened, and called some pretty harsh and horrible names.  

I also remember when they used to have the special handouts/prizes for the first 100 or so shoppers.  You know like game pieces they took to the Toy department to see if they won a car. Special discounts only available in the nice grab bag the shoppers got from camping out all night and protecting their right to walk through the door before the majority of the other people.  The reality was that most of the grab bag tend to have coupons for batteries and buy one get one free.  They quit doing that sort of thing because I think it got too dangerous.  In the little town of Boise we almost had our doors broken as people were pushing people and the doors prior to opening.  I cannot imagine the amount of people that were trampled or hurt due to the greedy monster that took over others in line.

The door busting electronic!!!!  I worked different years in the electronic department.  Every year there was some stereo and camera that were priced so low that you knew you were going to run out before the second hours was done.  One year we had an abundance of the stereo so we had both sides of an entire aisle filled with them as well as eye level shelves on both sides of the outside of electronics.  We had to put the rest on "risers" or the highest shelf in electronic because there was NO way we were going to be able to have a pallet brought from all the way from the back of the store to electronics.  People started climbing the outer side of electronic - the computer game wall in Music and Movies and knocking the stereo's over on the people in that aisle.  The stupid thing was that there was still an entire aisle of them and they were knocking them over not towards them so it was nothing but dangerous.  The sad thing is that due to the cheapness, rough handling, or whatever, about half of those door busting electronics were usually returned due to not working.

Note the blonde woman looking like she is in the fight of her life.

The worse thing was being scheduled to close.  You got there when everyone is grouchy and the store is sooooo messy you don't see much of an end in sight.  You remember when I likened the opening of the doors to a game show.... well the participants seemed to split up and grab everything they could and meet back (usually by a scanner or in the girls clothing department) and go through what they had and dump a ton of stuff on the floor as it was duplicates or unwanted.  It was your job to pick it all up, sort it, and then put the stuff back in your designated area.  Plus, you still had to deal with the customers that were not finding anything left and tired as they had been up since most likely 4 am at other stores.  My favorite was that they would all be genuinely shocked that you were out of the items with the best prices or that were the hottest.  It was like they did not notice the other hundreds of people that are walking around like angry zombies too.  Only they had the idea to come out and only they knew about the sale.  Somehow you personally made it so that they would waste their time coming in just to frustrate them with this cruel joke.

Most of the time it was hard to get people to leave the store.  I think they were in some sort of hope that you would find a pallet of goods hidden or didn't want to go home disappointed.  Finally when they did go you were happy because at least if you fixed one area it would stay fixed.  Most of the time we gave up around 2 am and called it good.  The truck team came in around 4 am and fixed as they stocked some areas.  Only to hope that you were scheduled as a mid worker tomorrow because you would rather work with little sleep then have to close again.

The biggest and busiest shopping day of the year - thanks for all the memories good and bad.  And NO I am not a shopper on that day no matter the deals in the ads.