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Black Friday
Nov. 23rd, 2006 02:09 pmBlack Friday. The words strike fear into the hearts of retail workers everywhere. Black Friday. The day after Thanksgiving, the traditional beginning of the Christmas shopping season. The busiest shopping day of the year. The day when you can't pry me out of the house with a promise of my favorite restaurant, all the chocolate I could possibly want or a stick of dynamite.
Like many young people, my first jobs were mall jobs: cinema cashier, restaurant hostess (actually, that one did take me out of the mall, but only lasted four months)...and toy store clerk. Yes, indeedy, I worked at Kay Bee Toys in the local mall for five years. That's five Black Fridays and five Christmas Eves.
Fortunately, this was during the late 80s and early 90s before retail chains got ridiculously greedy -- they've always been greedy, yes, but at least in the old days, we didn't have to be there to open the store before dawn. We opened at a sensible 10:00 a.m., just like we did every other day of the week (excepting Sunday, of course, when we opened at noon). And we didn't stay open until midnight, either. Mall hours were extended one hour only for the Christmas season.
Because I was the fastest cashier, I was always stationed at Register 1 for Black Friday (and Christmas Eve, for that matter). This was in the early days of scanners, when generally only grocery stores -- and then only the big chains -- had them, so SKUs (inventory control numbers) had to be typed by hand into the register. And I was really good at it, probably from a background as a pianist and typist, which made my fingers nimble and me used to doing something without watching them.
I actually enjoyed working the register; it was fast-paced and that made the seven-hour shift go by quickly. What I hated was cleaning the store up afterward, but fortunately, at least on Black Friday, when the store was open for another five hours after my shift ended, I didn't have to worry about it. I could just limp off home, put my feet up and not move for the rest of the evening.
After five years of the crowds, the abuse (though people were often quite rude, I was, surprisingly, only once told to do something anatomically inappropriate) and the sore, sore feet, I quit. So I only suffered through five Black Fridays and five Christmas Eves, but I think they're worth double points since they were in a toy store, with customers streaming in and out, desperate to make magical holidays for their kids.
Nowadays, I consider a successful Black Friday one on which I do not leave my house for any reason, and between now and 27 December, I will only enter retail establishments very early in the morning or very late at night. As for my own Christmas shopping...I do it online.
Like many young people, my first jobs were mall jobs: cinema cashier, restaurant hostess (actually, that one did take me out of the mall, but only lasted four months)...and toy store clerk. Yes, indeedy, I worked at Kay Bee Toys in the local mall for five years. That's five Black Fridays and five Christmas Eves.
Fortunately, this was during the late 80s and early 90s before retail chains got ridiculously greedy -- they've always been greedy, yes, but at least in the old days, we didn't have to be there to open the store before dawn. We opened at a sensible 10:00 a.m., just like we did every other day of the week (excepting Sunday, of course, when we opened at noon). And we didn't stay open until midnight, either. Mall hours were extended one hour only for the Christmas season.
Because I was the fastest cashier, I was always stationed at Register 1 for Black Friday (and Christmas Eve, for that matter). This was in the early days of scanners, when generally only grocery stores -- and then only the big chains -- had them, so SKUs (inventory control numbers) had to be typed by hand into the register. And I was really good at it, probably from a background as a pianist and typist, which made my fingers nimble and me used to doing something without watching them.
I actually enjoyed working the register; it was fast-paced and that made the seven-hour shift go by quickly. What I hated was cleaning the store up afterward, but fortunately, at least on Black Friday, when the store was open for another five hours after my shift ended, I didn't have to worry about it. I could just limp off home, put my feet up and not move for the rest of the evening.
After five years of the crowds, the abuse (though people were often quite rude, I was, surprisingly, only once told to do something anatomically inappropriate) and the sore, sore feet, I quit. So I only suffered through five Black Fridays and five Christmas Eves, but I think they're worth double points since they were in a toy store, with customers streaming in and out, desperate to make magical holidays for their kids.
Nowadays, I consider a successful Black Friday one on which I do not leave my house for any reason, and between now and 27 December, I will only enter retail establishments very early in the morning or very late at night. As for my own Christmas shopping...I do it online.
