Altron
Well-Known Member
So there I am, at work, Saturday.
"Hey, do you know anything about black friday hours?"
An innocent enough question, I suppose.
"Yeah, Jeff wants us all here from open to close, 4am-11pm"
I said the only thing I could - "FUCK"
So, I have the usual Thanksgiving, all fun and happy with family. I go home, chill out. I plan to hit the rack about 9:30, since I needed to be at work at 4am. Unfourtunately, I decide "Hey, why not read for a few minutes."
Unfourtunately, a few minutes turns into an hour and a half. The last 100-150 pages were more intense than I expected, and I couldn't put the damn thing down.
At 11:00 I finally head up - but no. The shower in the bathroom is dripping. It's on the other side of the wall, which has no insulation in it, about 3 feet away from my head. Drip. Drip. Drip. I was about ready to shut off the water to the house.
At midnight I finally fall asleep.
3 hours later, bam, awake again. I make a quick breakfast and get out the door. I arrive at Circuitcity at four, an hour before it opens. There's a mob of about 50 people in front. I get handed a bunch of flyers for a $180 printer/camera combo. Shit, I think, I need to go outside. I didn't bring a hat. I didn't bring gloves. It was 25 degrees F, which is something like -5 or -10 for you celcius people. It's dark and windy, making it even colder. I go down the line, which is now about 500 yards long containing close to a thousand people, this being still 20 minutes before opening, all of whom are here to buy the $200 laptop, of which we have about 50 in stock. By the time I get to the end, I couldn't feel my face or my hands.
I get a chance to go inside. The managers go to the departments "man your battle stations"
SHIT! They forgot to give me the gas masks, night sticks, and tear gas that I will need to control this angry mob.
I get put in the DVD players aisle. Our big sales are the Polariod DVDP for $20, the Nexxtech portable DVDP with 7" LCD for $76, the Lite-On DVD+-RW/VCR combo for $150, and the Lite-On DVD+-RW for $75. Unfourtunately, the Lite-On stuff isn't physically in the aisle. We found out a half hour later that the DVDR/VCR combo is two aisles over, but we have no idea where the straight DVDR is. Hell, we've never even seen the damn thing before. It's not on display, it's not on the shelf. We heard a rumor that it's in the back, behind the computer repair desk, after about a half hour.
The angry mob comes rushing in. About 95% of people are asking for those four items. Too bad the managers didn't feel it necessary to inform us of the location of two of them. The 69 portable DVDPs we have in stock are gone in 20 minutes. We only got a few people going for the $20 polariods, but we later found out that there were two pallets of them in the front.
The problem lies with the two items we don't have in the aisle. We think that the other people have them. They think that we have them. People get stuck in a loop. They'll ask us where something is, we direct them across the store. They ask the salesmen across the store, they direct the customer back to us. Since we can't leave the aisles, it sucked. I think it reflected poorly on management that they did not show us the locations of the special sale items, which were located in pallets around the store. Until about eight, when we were able to leave the aisles, we weren't sure where the stuff was.
Of course, the pandemonium for the $75 DVDR was nothing compared to the $200 laptop. There was a huge line in the Computer department for buying the laptops.
The thing that I did not like about the customers - they expected me to know what things were in stock. The way to find if something is in stock is to go to the registers and use Magellan to check the inventory. Since the sales volume is huge, we had people working just the registers. There were long lines at them. I couldn't get to a register without waiting 15 minutes, and that was after the 6 hour sales ended. There were long lines and employees only ringing people up. And here come the customers, expecting someone working in the DVD players department to know exactly how many laptops we have in stock. Then they act pissed off when I tell them that I have no idea how many there are.
Over in the laptops section, people were fighting over them. At least one person was taken away in handcuffs.
Another person, a seasonal employee like myself, got fired for having a fight with another salesmen about whether LCDs have a bulb. The seasonal guy thought that they had a bulb that needs to be replaced every two years. He also called the $190 15" lcd tv "that fifteen inch piece of shit" in front of customers, which is a big no-no. Bam, fired on the spot.
The rest of it is pretty much a blur. I finally clocked out at noon, after an 8 hour shift with no breaks. I got some lunch, went home, drank eight cups of mountain dew, soaked my feet in a tub, and fell asleep.
I wake up and I get very disorinented. When I go to bed and it's light out then wake up when it's dark, I get confused. I go downstairs, get some dinner, then post this.
I know, the post doesn't really 'flow' and isn't well thought out, but I'm braindead by now.
"Hey, do you know anything about black friday hours?"
An innocent enough question, I suppose.
"Yeah, Jeff wants us all here from open to close, 4am-11pm"
I said the only thing I could - "FUCK"
So, I have the usual Thanksgiving, all fun and happy with family. I go home, chill out. I plan to hit the rack about 9:30, since I needed to be at work at 4am. Unfourtunately, I decide "Hey, why not read for a few minutes."
Unfourtunately, a few minutes turns into an hour and a half. The last 100-150 pages were more intense than I expected, and I couldn't put the damn thing down.
At 11:00 I finally head up - but no. The shower in the bathroom is dripping. It's on the other side of the wall, which has no insulation in it, about 3 feet away from my head. Drip. Drip. Drip. I was about ready to shut off the water to the house.
At midnight I finally fall asleep.
3 hours later, bam, awake again. I make a quick breakfast and get out the door. I arrive at Circuitcity at four, an hour before it opens. There's a mob of about 50 people in front. I get handed a bunch of flyers for a $180 printer/camera combo. Shit, I think, I need to go outside. I didn't bring a hat. I didn't bring gloves. It was 25 degrees F, which is something like -5 or -10 for you celcius people. It's dark and windy, making it even colder. I go down the line, which is now about 500 yards long containing close to a thousand people, this being still 20 minutes before opening, all of whom are here to buy the $200 laptop, of which we have about 50 in stock. By the time I get to the end, I couldn't feel my face or my hands.
I get a chance to go inside. The managers go to the departments "man your battle stations"
SHIT! They forgot to give me the gas masks, night sticks, and tear gas that I will need to control this angry mob.
I get put in the DVD players aisle. Our big sales are the Polariod DVDP for $20, the Nexxtech portable DVDP with 7" LCD for $76, the Lite-On DVD+-RW/VCR combo for $150, and the Lite-On DVD+-RW for $75. Unfourtunately, the Lite-On stuff isn't physically in the aisle. We found out a half hour later that the DVDR/VCR combo is two aisles over, but we have no idea where the straight DVDR is. Hell, we've never even seen the damn thing before. It's not on display, it's not on the shelf. We heard a rumor that it's in the back, behind the computer repair desk, after about a half hour.
The angry mob comes rushing in. About 95% of people are asking for those four items. Too bad the managers didn't feel it necessary to inform us of the location of two of them. The 69 portable DVDPs we have in stock are gone in 20 minutes. We only got a few people going for the $20 polariods, but we later found out that there were two pallets of them in the front.
The problem lies with the two items we don't have in the aisle. We think that the other people have them. They think that we have them. People get stuck in a loop. They'll ask us where something is, we direct them across the store. They ask the salesmen across the store, they direct the customer back to us. Since we can't leave the aisles, it sucked. I think it reflected poorly on management that they did not show us the locations of the special sale items, which were located in pallets around the store. Until about eight, when we were able to leave the aisles, we weren't sure where the stuff was.
Of course, the pandemonium for the $75 DVDR was nothing compared to the $200 laptop. There was a huge line in the Computer department for buying the laptops.
The thing that I did not like about the customers - they expected me to know what things were in stock. The way to find if something is in stock is to go to the registers and use Magellan to check the inventory. Since the sales volume is huge, we had people working just the registers. There were long lines at them. I couldn't get to a register without waiting 15 minutes, and that was after the 6 hour sales ended. There were long lines and employees only ringing people up. And here come the customers, expecting someone working in the DVD players department to know exactly how many laptops we have in stock. Then they act pissed off when I tell them that I have no idea how many there are.
Over in the laptops section, people were fighting over them. At least one person was taken away in handcuffs.
Another person, a seasonal employee like myself, got fired for having a fight with another salesmen about whether LCDs have a bulb. The seasonal guy thought that they had a bulb that needs to be replaced every two years. He also called the $190 15" lcd tv "that fifteen inch piece of shit" in front of customers, which is a big no-no. Bam, fired on the spot.
The rest of it is pretty much a blur. I finally clocked out at noon, after an 8 hour shift with no breaks. I got some lunch, went home, drank eight cups of mountain dew, soaked my feet in a tub, and fell asleep.
I wake up and I get very disorinented. When I go to bed and it's light out then wake up when it's dark, I get confused. I go downstairs, get some dinner, then post this.
I know, the post doesn't really 'flow' and isn't well thought out, but I'm braindead by now.
