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Tales From Retail
Nov. 30th, 2008 11:34 amRetail may be it's own rung of hell, but Retail on Black Friday/Day After Thanksgiving, is a hell onto itself...
I begin by saying that we had nowhere near the amount of people that the store saw last year. The fact that we are in a recession was clear as a day by the room to move in the store. That said, we had a steady stream of people and a line that seemed unending on my side of store for seven straight hours. And I wasn't even in electronics, which was a solid mass of people for the same time period.
Fortunately, with fewer people, there were no fights (in my section anyway) and things went as smoothly as we could have hoped for. And even with fewer people, we were the number one store in our region for the day's sales, and number six in the country! We broke a million dollars that day which was wonderful. So why is it it's own rung of hell?
First, you should never be getting up at 3am to sell anyone anything, especially when you have to also get up at 5am the very next day to sell them more stuff. Second, for all the calm of my store, there were other places that didn't fair as well.
I know there were countless incidents of cursing and shoving and hollering and a great deal of blame being laid at the feet of cashiers and managers across the country, for which I feel for them. But above and beyond were the fatalities.
Two men shot and killed each other in a Toys R Us in California, and a seasonal worker was trampled to death at a Walmart in New York. Three people whose families will never see them again, over, of all things, useless, replaceable, stuff. If that's not a special hell, I don't know what is.
"Retail Rung of Hell Ramble" Done
~X
