I remember hating working on Black Fridays -- and we sure didn't get paid extra for it. However, we
had to show up on our scheduled work day
before Thanksgiving and also our scheduled hours on Black Friday, or we wouldn't get our holiday pay for Thanksgiving. That was our incentive to show up.
Fortunately the store I used to work for is not open in Thanksgiving.
I cannot even begin to tell you how horrible Black Friday was, especially the first one I worked. We didn't open until 6 a.m. but they usually opened the store 20 minutes earlier without warning (while we were still opening registers) before and the lines were long by 6 a.m.
The customers were difficult but it was MANAGEMENT that made us miserable. Talk about clueless. Of course they weren't the ones who had to ring the customers up and deal with their anger.
On my first Black Friday the genius store manager knew that there were MORNING coupons for $10 off a $10 purchase. Can you imagine such havoc such a coupon caused?
Free stuff! Now I know that was an idiotic corporate decision, not the store manager's fault.
Anyway, there was only supposed to be
one coupon per customer. Guess what? Our genius store manager decided the customers could have as many of these free stuff coupons as they wanted! These customers must have bought dozens of newspapers for the coupons! Of course it was a MORNING sale but the "morning" went from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The genius store manager also decided that our 9.99 store brand towels could be included in this promotion. So every one of these towels the customer brought to us, we had to manually change the price to 10.00 (easy, but time-consuming). The store manager also decided that we were supposed to ring up each towel (while changing the price and scanning their accompanying coupon) SEPARATELY. Some of these people had 25 towels and the line was HUNDREDS of customers long. I kid you not.
After a few minutes of this I just decided "to hell with it!" and rang up all of a customer's towels TOGETHER and scanned all of their coupons. What difference did it make anyway? They were getting them FREE! The managers never said a word to me afterward.
The genius manager had also decided that there was only going to be ONE stock person -- for the
whole frigging store -- from 6 a.m. until 2 p.m. He not only had to put stuff out on the floor but take customer-bought stuff down to customer pick-up. (stuff in housewares, bedding and china can be VERY heavy).
Customers wanted their items sent down to customer pick up but there was NO ONE to do it (we had to call the stock kid over the radio but the poor kid in stock - an excellent worker BTW - was completely overwhelmed by having to do this for the ENTIRE store - I felt so bad for him). The paid-for stuff sat by our registers for hours and we kept tripping over it. Finally customers started STEALING stuff out of those bags (for which others had already paid.) I finally called my extremely lazy department manager and told him this. That finally got his lazy ass in gear and he started taking some of this stuff to customer pick-up even though it was BENEATH him.
But worse than Black Friday was the NEXT day, Saturday. Word had spread that there was FREE STUFF! and there were even more customers waiting to get in!
The same sales were on Saturday morning but now the genius store manager decided that customers could only use THREE of the coupons (remember that there was only supposed to be one per customer to begin with). Many of the customers in line had been there the day before and had come back armed with fresh coupons. When they find out that they could only use THREE that day instead of one, havoc ensued. There was nearly a riot. Customers started screaming at us and refusing to leave, management started screaming at us because the lines came to a complete standstill, and it was a nightmare. Remember this is at 6 a.m. I'm cranky and tired and struggling with PMS. I'm trying to HARD not to start sobbing. I was always very good with customer service but this was just too much!
One customer was reeking of heavy perfume. Because of my exhaustion and lack of sleep, this triggered my allergies (I'm allergic to perfume, wool, dust, etc.). I started sneezing uncontrollably and feeling even more wretched. Finally at 7:30 I had had ENOUGH. PMS combined with a fierce headache combined with miserable allergies drove me over the edge. Fortunately by this time more salespeople had showed up. I called a manager over and told them I felt sick and was going home. I had to call my mother to pick me up and I went home and went to bed for the rest of the day. I really felt terrible and did not feel the least bit guilty.
When I came in the next day (Sunday) all of the towels were gone -- and so were the customers -- no more free stuff!
Fortunately the next year things were better organized. The morning coupons were changed to $10 over a $25 purchase. Still incredibly busy but nothing like that first year. The biggest problem is that you can't use a morning coupon on morning specials -- the customers just LOVED that
I also had a better department manager who wasn't so frigging lazy (although he was later fired for stealing from the store - he had a gambling problem)
The funniest thing though is that later some customers tried to return some of the
free towels and thought we were going to
give them money back!
So my favorite time of year to NOT be working in retail anymore is Black Friday. I so enjoy sleeping late, and not dealing with crazy management and customers. The sad thing is that I really enjoyed helping customers under normal circumstances. Sometimes I really miss it -- but not enough to work evenings, weekends, holidays, and be available 24/7 during the Christmas season. The sad thing is that retailers don't really give a fig anymore about customer service -- I was continuously told that I was TOO helpful and spent TOO MUCH TIME with the customers. They only care about sales and SELLING CREDIT CARDS. I could tell you stories . . .
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