Black Friday

Fist Fights. Diving over tables. Screaming. In general, complete mayhem. Or at least that is what I was expecting from the build up about Black Friday. Unfortunately, not even one argument all day. I heard that people started the line by 2 pm on Thanksgiving (15 hours before we opened), but the line was not really that long when I arrived at 4:15 am to start working. When it came time to open, at 5 am, I was ready for a blitz of people scrambling to scoop up every last item in the store. I also expected it to last all morning. The first 15 minutes looked promising, I had people on all sides asking me to point them in the right direction for the deal that they wanted. but then the people all started to leave and move on to other stores. By 8 am, we were already sending people home who had split shifts. They had all been scheduled to help out until 10 am.

My favorite question of the day, and most popular question to ask was, "Do you still have this computer?" Pointing to the computer on the front page of the Black Friday ad, the one that people lined up outside the day before to make sure they got. We had ticketed that item and handed tickets out starting at 2:30 am. The tickets were good until 9 am at which point they were released for anyone to get. When people found this out a line started to form in order to get first shot once they were released. This line started forming at around 7:30 am. Despite the fact that they were all gone by around 10 am, people were still hoping to get the computer when I left the store at 5 pm.

In order to ensure that the Best Buy employees were able to keep a smile on their face throughout the long shifts, they offered two perks. One was free Chipotle. It was delivered every two hours and available for lunch. The other was a masseuse. She arrived at 10 and was just there in the employee break room giving out massages all day.

All in all, people were in a good mood. I met one lady who told me she was leaving for Venezuela on Wednesday and was buying a computer for her 52nd anniversary gift. I only encountered two people who were less than happy. One was upset because we advertised a computer on a two day sale but sold them all. He felt that if the computer was on a two day sale, then we should still have them in stock for both days. He did not seem to understand that we had the minimum number of the computer and we had sold them all. The other dissatisfied customer was upset that we advertised 2 GB of ram on sale, but it was a package of 2 1 GB sticks of ram instead of one stick of 2 GB ram. But other than those two incidences, it was a pretty pleasant day.

After 12 and a half hours in Best Buy you would probably not expect me to return to another Best Buy again in the same day. But alas, we went to Chesterfield Commons for dinner and some shopping at Best Buy. I bought the Olympus 1030 sw camera that I plan on using while SCUBA diving. It is waterproof to 33 feet, shock proof to a 6.6 feet fall, crush proof for 270 pounds, and freeze proof. It also has a manometer to measure the altitude or depth of your picture.

Then I went to bed at about 10 pm while watching Blue Planet: Seas of Life, the tidal seas episode.