I hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving yesterday. We went to my parents house and watched the Raven’s game after eating a wonderful turkey dinner. My husband had to work unfortunately. He’s an assistant manager for Walmart, and this is what he had to look forward to after getting home at 11 am from working all night, then having to be back into work at 5 pm:
Thankfully, this wasn’t at his store, and he didn’t really have any issues with customers going totally bat poopie. I heard that there was a big fight at our local store though. People were fighting up by the registers for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I am personally glad that I don’t work retail anymore. I worked the Walmart Black Friday sale for three years, and each one I got trampled for stuff that totally wasn’t worth the effort it took to knock down employes trying to do their job.
My favorite was the last year I worked for them. I was over in electronics, which might as well be the Pits of Hell on Black Friday, guarding a stack display of camcorders. Some bitchy woman made a huge scene telling everyone that we would be giving out the $500 50″ TVs over in Layway. We I told her that we weren’t due to safety issues and would be announcing the location shortly before the time, she proceeded to curse me out while jumping up and down in my face, then stomp off to Layaway. A hoard of people followed her over. Now, the layway there was down a narrow aisle between electronics and shoes. Obviously, if a bunch of people when tearing out of there, they were going to bottle-neck and get hurt…which is why were weren’t giving out the TVs there. Bitchy Lady thought we were trying to keep her from the TVs, and vocally told us as much while she yelled & carried on from her spot at the front of the line in Layway.
When the time came, the Co-manager picked the Fitting rooms to hand the TV vouchers out, which were clear on the other side of the store in a more open area. Predictably, hundreds of people went stampeding across the store, including close of 75 people running from Layway. All the Layaway people bottle-necked and ended up in a heap on the floor with people climbing over them. The co-manager, meanwhile, got mobbed. He let out a scream that was heard through the store, tossed the tickets up in the air, then dove into one of the fitting rooms. Unsurprisingly, Bitchy Lady didn’t get a damn thing, and ended up hauled out by the cops while kicking and screaming on the floor.
The highlight of my night was when, during the 5 minute warning at 4:55 am, some lunatic dove headfirst into the toy stacks, literally knocking over an entire wall of the Craft Department. That started a chain reaction and before I knew it, I had a mass lunging at my camera stack. Being the sensible and sleep-deprived person I was at the time, I leapt up on top of the stack while yelling ‘No!’. It startled everyone there enough that they stopped. The manager was standing right there, and started laughing hysterically at me. He then told everyone it was okay to start getting stuff from the stack. The mass descended, and I was left marooned on top of the stack since I couldn’t get down. I was helped down a little later by the Co-Manager (the one who gave out the TVs) once the initial surge died down and the stack was about to collapse out from under me. I spent the next hour and a half wandering around the crowd & eventually taking shelter in Automotive with several other, including one of the District Mangers who was there to help out.
By the time the Store Manager started telling us to go ahead and clock out early (since we were all freaked out by the crowd), we couldn’t get near the front of the store let alone out of the parking lot. I ended up getting a cart and shopping until almost 8:30 am before it cleared out enough to checkout and leave. Overall, it was nuts and none of us could believe the way the crowd was acting…even the guys who had been with the company for years. Again, I’m super glad I don’t work retail anymore.
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