I have enjoyed shopping on Black Friday for several years now, but this season spotlighted retailer responsibilities in how they conduct these sales. I hold up Wal-Mart’s infamous $378 laptop as the prime example of what not to do.
Living equal distances between each Wal-Mart, I chose to go to the west side store. I heard the east side store had a worse experience, though.
The sale started at 5 AM, so my buddies and I showed up at quarter after 4 AM. The store was already packed with shoppers, and everyone was asking about the laptops. There were several palettes throughout the store wrapped in black plastic. Employees were stationed at those palettes to guard against them being ripped open before 5 AM. Everyone grilled the employees on where the laptops were, but the loyal employees kept insisting they had not been told where the laptops would be revealed.
This strategy seemed to build a frenzy mentality among the shoppers. Everyone was talking about where the laptops were and what they would do to get one. Announcements were made a few times telling shoppers there were only 24 laptops available, and asked everyone to have patience with other shoppers and employees.
I sensed heightened anticipation as everyone realized there would be a mad grab of the 24 laptops as soon as they appeared in the store.
5 AM came and an announcement was made for employees to “cut open the palettes in 5,4,3,2,1 , cut open your palettes!” I heard palettes being ripped open around the store and several group of people saying “Awwwww” when they saw no laptops in front of the area they had staked out.
I was positioned near the back doors by the shoe aisle. Nothing happened in our area for about 15 seconds, then we saw a single employee pushing a cart from the back area to the doors in front of us! The cart pushed the double doors open and the laptops appeared on that cart!
As expected, there was a mad rush on the 24 laptops, and I tried to get close also. My friend seemed nervous as she called out for everyone to chill out. My friend and I were being polite and not shoving, so we did not get very far, and I could tell the laptops were going fast.
I finally started shoving my friend in front of me, and shoved her through the mob scene. The pile was down low, and one of the last boxes got loose of someone’s hands. It jumped around between several hands until my friend scooped it up and had to fight her way back out of the crowd to keep it.
I grabbed one of the last two boxes on the palette. As I pulled it up, a pair of hands appeared from underneath and tried to grab it from me! I pulled the box again, and a girl had attached herself to the underside of my box! I pulled again, this time pulling her out of the mob and clear into the next aisle. She yelled that she had it and it was hers, and two guys in the aisle also started saying it was hers and she had it. The way they were saying it implied they thought I was being a jerk and stealing it from her, and I’m not that kind of guy, so I let it go.
I heard from a Wal-Mart employee that two people got injured in the laptop fiasco at the east side store and had to go to the hospital. I realized that Wal-Mart has got to change their sales tactics because this is encouraging bad behavior. Yes, people should act more civilized, but the store heavily influences how the sale is conducted. Wal-Mart simply dropped the ball on this one.
They could have formed a line to sell first-come, first-served. They could have set out 24 chairs for laptop customers to sit in starting the night before. They could have taken a cue from Circuit City. The manager saw hundreds of people crowding outside for the 20 low-priced computers they offered. He wrote numbers on 20 paper slips, then handed them to customers outside the store, then only sold the computers to those with the numbers.
Next year, I am going to pursue the biggest door-buster deal again. However, I will stand back and photograph/video the mob scene instead of getting in the middle of it. Hopefully retailers will recognize their responsibility in conducting these sales and will take steps to lessen the frenzied mob mentality.
Or at least I will get some great images of shopper mobs.
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Let's have a new poll, alright, Joe?
:@:)
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