Shop 'Til You Drop

A recent Reddit thread concerned Black Friday horror stories. Since it's absurdly late I'm going to share my favorite tale from the thread rather than a generous dose of my folksy wisdom. Enjoy.

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I ran an electronics department in a large retail store and was a veteran to Black Friday. My team always had everything under control. We had tickets for everything that would sell out quickly, we knew exact numbers and where everything was, and had signs for lineups for hourly deals. We were always prepared and never had an issue.

One year, the district manager decided to "observe" our store during Black Friday. She stopped by my department in the thick of it to see how things were going on my end. It was insanely busy of course, but we had everything managed. She was carrying a piece of paper which she told me had some unadvertised markdowns for old inventory. This was news to me. She glanced at it, grabbed my phone, and made a store-wide announcement that we had JVC Digital Camcorders marked down to $49, regular price $199.

As she was making the announcement, I stood there with my jaw open. A sense of fear came over me. I knew the model that was just marked down, and we did have it in inventory. The problem was, we only had 4. The store was packed, and a fast-moving zombie horde of shoppers immediately swamped my department from all sides. It was some Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead shit. As the horde swept over my department, I saw my district manager hightail it out of there.

I have never been in more fear for my life.

=Lefty=