redeye58
Hasta Ba Rista, Baby!
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- Jun 9, 2011
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Oh, I dunno. There are some family I'd avoid no matter how little the cost....
Archived How did the 9PM opening go at your store?
- Thread starter ISMQUEEN
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My sister, yes!
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- Jul 9, 2012
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Then I disagree, NO way do I think working on a day like Black Friday is a fun way of living life.
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- May 29, 2012
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I agree. This weekend is hell. How do I know it's hell? Because nearly every single GSA to ETL has had at least one of the possible five shifts (double for Black Friday) off. When they all know it's too much to work all five, you know it's a killer for those of us stuck doing it.
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- Aug 16, 2011
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This has nothing to do with Black Thursday but..... I decided to go visit my friends on Friday ( since they pretty much give me the rest of the day off) and since I had Saturday off I was good to go. I told my husband I was leaving my cell phone at home and I wanted peace and quiet girls getaway and he said you need it! I come home tonight and was checking my cell phone and guess who decided to call?? Target asking if I would come in tonight! Gee it's Black Friday weekend suddenly you are strapped?? Why didn't you think of that sooner before you decided to not schedule me and I know they scheduled others off as well because I remember other TMS saying I got Friday and Saturday off this weekend is going to be great! Amazing how they always bury themselves into holes and scramble for people to come in especially on the weekends!
agreed. i opened and closed on BF. saw nearly half of the ETLs come in and leave for the slow portions.
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- Jul 27, 2012
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I disagree. I work three jobs plus a side business. Cash rules everything around me. But a given viewpoint is entirely subjective and dependent on the observer. I appreciate your views. I just see the holidays as just another way of profiting off society, who have been conditioned to spend money at certain times of the year.
Everyone you know someday will die. Appreciate the time when you have it -- not just for sake of tradition. You could have a "Christmas" in March. Just because everyone else is doing it doesn't mean you're under any obligation to do the same.
It's not about greed for me at all. I do what you can to grab the green and squirrel it away. At least, that's where I stand. If people want to do silly little things like stand in line to purchase a "cheap" tv and that makes my wallet fatter? Shoot. I'm there.
Got a car issue and can't afford a mechanic? Need it fixed at low cost? I'm there. Oh, your house flooded and the sheetrock needs to be taken out? I'm there. Oh, your computer seems to be overheating and shutting itself off? I'm there.
Either way, I'm sure you might feel like you're being exploited. But as far as I'm concerned, I'm the one doing the exploiting. I'll get ahead, come hell or high water. My time is money. If spot wants to pay me for my time, it's irrelevant when I have to be there. Just name the time and place. I'll be there.
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- Jun 9, 2012
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- 78
i was scheduled in electronics. the first guest asked for the 499 nikon bundle... our store "misplaced" them, so he was irate and furious. basically we *lost* 3 of the most wanted ad items until around 1 am.
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- May 29, 2012
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Funny...we couldn't find our Nikon bundles either, for a good hour!
Electronics was a disaster. A serious clusterf#&k.
First my store decided to open the doors ten minutes early...and only gave us a 5 minute warning. In Electronics was myself, my team lead, a fellow electronics TM, an entertainment TM, a GSTL and two cashiers. That's it. And then one of our cashiers was stolen by the floor. We had no ETLs and no AP over there for the entirety of my 9 hr shift. We also were not considered important enough to be given equipment of any kind aside from keys. No walkies and no PDAs. After an hour of being bewildered over what the prices of certain items were, or where things were located, my GSTL went to TSC and found 4 PDAs and 2 walkies just sitting up there.
We finally got another cashier about an hour into opening, so I was finally able to get off a register and help people in line/on the floor. Meanwhile, the cashier I had since opening was having a f$@king breakdown. She was freaking out on everyone and about everything. On top of everything else, I didn't need to hold this girl's hand through everything. I needed a strong, competent, cool cashier that could handle the stress. Instead, they gave me a second rate wackjob.
At this point, we still had no crowd control/AP, and my Electronics team lead was nowhere to be found. We had two lines, one going to Photo, where we had the iPads, laptops and 50 inch door buster tvs, and the other to the boat, where we had iPods, Nooks, Beats headphones, DSs, Vitas, and cameras. However, the lines to each met along the back tv wall, and, because of the lack of crowd control, guests had no idea which items were at which registers, and there was a lot of pushing, shoving and cutting. AP thought that strategically placing shippers would prevent this, but anyone could have told them that would fail miserably.
I checked on Photo at this point and found that none of them had gone to break, so I supported them and they took breaks in waves. Once they had all gone, I went back over to the Boat. A till utter chaos. The cashier that was freaking out was going full blown mental breakdown at this point. She stopped ringing up people and started telling that she hadn't had a break and needed to go. My ETL made an appearance at this point and just stood there like a freaking moron. I shoved her onto the register. Lol. She disappeared immediately after Mrs. Breakdown came back, never to be seen again.
But then our b*@&$h of an AP ETL graced us with presence. But instead of being useful or competent in any way, she freaked out because someone had handed out one of the Canon T3 bundles to a guest. She started yelling, so I told her I didn't give two about a camera, when we had tvs and game consoles on the floor. Then I told her to stop focusing on electronics, and instead do something about the craziness of the lines over there. She decided to just walk away instead. Wonderful.
Now guests were freaking out, because we had handed out tickets for the 50 inch tv, and on the ticket, it said that their hold on the tv expired after 2 hours. Apparently my STL, when asked about the expiration, told them that that was indeed the case, and that, even though these people had been waiting in line since opening, they weren't going to be guaranteed their tv. So I pretty much had to override him, and reassure my guests that they would get their tvs.
Oh, and our useless ETLs thought it would be wise to start moving product from their locations listed on the map. So guests were confused and pissed because they were being incorrectly directed.
My store was a ****ing disaster. Oh, and we missed sales by over $50,000. Yay.
First my store decided to open the doors ten minutes early...and only gave us a 5 minute warning. In Electronics was myself, my team lead, a fellow electronics TM, an entertainment TM, a GSTL and two cashiers. That's it. And then one of our cashiers was stolen by the floor. We had no ETLs and no AP over there for the entirety of my 9 hr shift. We also were not considered important enough to be given equipment of any kind aside from keys. No walkies and no PDAs. After an hour of being bewildered over what the prices of certain items were, or where things were located, my GSTL went to TSC and found 4 PDAs and 2 walkies just sitting up there.
We finally got another cashier about an hour into opening, so I was finally able to get off a register and help people in line/on the floor. Meanwhile, the cashier I had since opening was having a f$@king breakdown. She was freaking out on everyone and about everything. On top of everything else, I didn't need to hold this girl's hand through everything. I needed a strong, competent, cool cashier that could handle the stress. Instead, they gave me a second rate wackjob.
At this point, we still had no crowd control/AP, and my Electronics team lead was nowhere to be found. We had two lines, one going to Photo, where we had the iPads, laptops and 50 inch door buster tvs, and the other to the boat, where we had iPods, Nooks, Beats headphones, DSs, Vitas, and cameras. However, the lines to each met along the back tv wall, and, because of the lack of crowd control, guests had no idea which items were at which registers, and there was a lot of pushing, shoving and cutting. AP thought that strategically placing shippers would prevent this, but anyone could have told them that would fail miserably.
I checked on Photo at this point and found that none of them had gone to break, so I supported them and they took breaks in waves. Once they had all gone, I went back over to the Boat. A till utter chaos. The cashier that was freaking out was going full blown mental breakdown at this point. She stopped ringing up people and started telling that she hadn't had a break and needed to go. My ETL made an appearance at this point and just stood there like a freaking moron. I shoved her onto the register. Lol. She disappeared immediately after Mrs. Breakdown came back, never to be seen again.
But then our b*@&$h of an AP ETL graced us with presence. But instead of being useful or competent in any way, she freaked out because someone had handed out one of the Canon T3 bundles to a guest. She started yelling, so I told her I didn't give two about a camera, when we had tvs and game consoles on the floor. Then I told her to stop focusing on electronics, and instead do something about the craziness of the lines over there. She decided to just walk away instead. Wonderful.
Now guests were freaking out, because we had handed out tickets for the 50 inch tv, and on the ticket, it said that their hold on the tv expired after 2 hours. Apparently my STL, when asked about the expiration, told them that that was indeed the case, and that, even though these people had been waiting in line since opening, they weren't going to be guaranteed their tv. So I pretty much had to override him, and reassure my guests that they would get their tvs.
Oh, and our useless ETLs thought it would be wise to start moving product from their locations listed on the map. So guests were confused and pissed because they were being incorrectly directed.
My store was a ****ing disaster. Oh, and we missed sales by over $50,000. Yay.
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2012
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- 70
It went fine. We had that initial rush at the beginning, and then after 3 hours, it slowed to the point that we could actually leave the electronics boat and pick up and work on distress/reshop. Then, the rush hit again around 5 am and it was consistently busy all Friday.
We were well prepared (over in electronics) so it went smoothly.
We were well prepared (over in electronics) so it went smoothly.
You have to realize some people REALLY need money and you have to make sacrifices. Plus some may not have plans to spend time with family or want to. I LOVE my family to death, but I wouldn't mind skipping a dinner with them.
Trust me when I say this, you would be surprised at to how many people would work on Thanksgiving. I love working holidays, time and half is great.
Not to mention the fact that opening black friday is the easiest shift since you only have the initial rush then it goes ghost town. Working during the day on Black Friday sucks as it's busy up until closing. 4 hours of my shift was walking around the parking lot with the other cart attendants as we had the inside filled up along with the reserves and not one single cart was outside. No need for 1+1 since there was maybe 10 people shopping by 3am and lanes were cleaned from the cashiers not having nothing to do.
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- Jun 8, 2011
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I love the adventure on 3ds super Mario. None in electronics, only in soft lines. then the canon bundle, we had only one. Same dpci has regular one. That was bad. All the guest were in electronics.
The biggest to do at my store was that people would get in the electronics line and not know what its for. The person queing the line should have told them what items they could just line up for, and what had to actually be "found" out of a case or in the stockroom first. Also having the items at the boat also in their home cases, and in the backroom. They should have emptied the cases (or put in one of each for display) and sold down the boat and had the stuff in the BR counted and ready to go (ie we have 34 of X, and we took out 15, and now we took out the last batch and there definitely aren't anymore.....). That way if the case is sold out you know it is out. And it wouldn't hurt to have someone walk around with a barcoded ad and update what is sold out. We've done better in that past with that.
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- Jul 8, 2011
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- 246
It was good, or so I heard. I was stuck in the C.O for the first 3 hours. I knew they were gonna need cash Asap so i already made an advance and when I peeked out the door to yell for my gstl, all i saw was people. People everywhere.
After about midnight, everyone was sooooo bored and we were all desperate to do something. I snuck out of the CO and helped sort the 10 backets of go backs. After that, forced myself to do another skim. I took my sweet time organizing the cash lol.
Which I later thanked myself cuz it only took me 4 hours to complete everything (over $130,000) on Saturday, simply because I organized all the skims before hand.
I wouldn't mind doing it again since I had fun more or less but, there has got to be something for us to do. We were bored out of our minds.
After about midnight, everyone was sooooo bored and we were all desperate to do something. I snuck out of the CO and helped sort the 10 backets of go backs. After that, forced myself to do another skim. I took my sweet time organizing the cash lol.
Which I later thanked myself cuz it only took me 4 hours to complete everything (over $130,000) on Saturday, simply because I organized all the skims before hand.
I wouldn't mind doing it again since I had fun more or less but, there has got to be something for us to do. We were bored out of our minds.
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Way too easy. We made goal somehow.
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- Nov 16, 2012
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in the end we didn't make sales...
backroom team members left early because the manual cafs were too small... we were bored after 4 hours... so much confusion because they didn't give backroom team members walkies. stating that we didn't need them...
my football game was on, it was thanksgiving... i didn't want to be there... and the people who came.. didn't spend much.
backroom team members left early because the manual cafs were too small... we were bored after 4 hours... so much confusion because they didn't give backroom team members walkies. stating that we didn't need them...
my football game was on, it was thanksgiving... i didn't want to be there... and the people who came.. didn't spend much.
Complete waste of time! Staff was not informed of the location of items from the circular; causing chaos and frustration. Store flat lined after about two hours, and staff out numbered guests. I hope they learned from this, and don't opt to open even earlier next year!
Deli Ninja
Formerly Softlines Ninja (Now in Deli Flavor)!
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- Oct 2, 2012
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All I know is that we missed sales and had one TM injury, not at all the TM's fault. The guest didn't even stop to see if the TM was okay...
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- May 29, 2012
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We were about 5% over goal...not bad for a ULV in a suburban area!
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