November 24, 2005

  • Mercy Maud, but am I glad I'm not working in retail right now!  It's amazing how many stores are opening at 6 a.m. and even 5 a.m. 

    Lemme see, to open the store at 5 a.m., the employees will have to be
    clocked in by 4:45 a.m., and heaps of them live a fair distance from
    the store, so they need to leave home around 4 a.m., meaning they need
    to haul themselves out of bed by 3:30 a.m. or so.

    And they're to be happy, and jolly, and helpful, and friendly! 

    Make me drag my carcass out at a frightful hour like that and you get what you get, and if what you get isn't a sock in the jaw you may count yourself fortunate. 

    Everyone would be far more cheerful  -  sales associates and customers, both  -  if they could get a decent night's sleep, ISTM.

Comments (5)

  • More to be thankful for! I remember those days for you, dreadful indeed! Mom

  • We had ads stating "After Thanksgiving Sale 5am to 11am". I have friends who get up in the middle of the night to stand in line waiting for these stores to open. Me? Today I plan to go fetch my mail from the post office and this evening go over to a friends house (another friend who doesn't shop the day after Thanksgiving). I feel sorry for all the clerks who must work today.

  • Several of our stores opened at 5 a.m. with super-colossal deals - but maybe only 20 of the item.  We went to the mall and Best Buy this afternoon, but only because we're having Christmas tomorrow with our Illinois family and they were slow getting their lists to us.  It wasn't too awful bad except for the music blaring at Best Buy.  I seldom shop Thanksgiving weekend.

  • I just bought the grandkids and nieces' gifts online, the only problem being the s/h fees; several of the items were "web only", though, so I figured it's worth it to have everything delivered to my door.

  • I've never been to one of the "Fourth Friday in November Mammon Sunrise Services," but the feeling I get from reading newspaper articles and such is that the grumpiness and disorder is part of the ambience. Apparently the inconvenience of the whole thing makes people think they must be getting an even better deal.

    So I don't think that your customers would mind terribly if you showed a few teeth that morning; it would leave them feeling that putting up with a cranky service person was the price of getting a really, REALLY good deal. It might even reinforce the feeling -- people are funny that way.

    Still, I'm thankful that neither you nor I have to put up with it.

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