Wild Things Run Fast
One single customer.
That's what we had waiting for us at 6am this morning, right when we opened the store doors. Staff stocked to the gills and braced for the deluge.
We made $500 total during our first hour. Five fucking hundred dollars. When I arrived at noon we were up to $9,000, which would be about average for a slow Monday any other day of the year. Our boss' former megastore in Salt Lake City made over $12,000 in the first hour alone. Five hundred dollars. Which means that one guy probably bought a Playstation 3 and a booster pack to go with it. Maybe a Beyonce CD as an impulse item. I dunno, I wasn't there, but Jesus Tapdancing Christ. Five hundred dollars in the first hour?
Of course the answer was easy: We simply had nothing to offer. In the past we would have a huge sale where MP3 players would be half off or we'd had tons of Wiis in stock, or just something people might actually want and are willing to be the first people in line to snap them up. Firstly, since our name change this summer, our newspaper ad was buried in with all the other similarly named mall stores, and most of the malls this year were not opening early, but instead closing late.Therefore most people didn't know that we were opening at six this morning, since in the past we usually opened at eight on Black Fridays. Secondly, other than 2-for-1 on select DVD box sets, we really don't have a damn thing to offer that the Best Buy down the road isn't beating the pants off of us in every other way -- and that includes Chinese Democracy.
Instead, we just had a simple, busy day. The kind of day we used to have most weekends when I first started working there four years ago. Plenty of staff, plenty of customers. People cherry-picking, and back then it was still okay to let them do so. Although I did have a lovely conversation with a nice woman in her fifties about the greatness of Aaron Neville, Otis Redding, and Joni Mitchell. I convinced her to buy, Clouds, Ladies Of The Canyon, and Court And Spark, and have her coming back this weekend to add Blue to her collection as well. She left thrilled to death with my service. I so love days when I have customers like that.
Dear God, our industry is in such sorry shape.
That's what we had waiting for us at 6am this morning, right when we opened the store doors. Staff stocked to the gills and braced for the deluge.
We made $500 total during our first hour. Five fucking hundred dollars. When I arrived at noon we were up to $9,000, which would be about average for a slow Monday any other day of the year. Our boss' former megastore in Salt Lake City made over $12,000 in the first hour alone. Five hundred dollars. Which means that one guy probably bought a Playstation 3 and a booster pack to go with it. Maybe a Beyonce CD as an impulse item. I dunno, I wasn't there, but Jesus Tapdancing Christ. Five hundred dollars in the first hour?
Of course the answer was easy: We simply had nothing to offer. In the past we would have a huge sale where MP3 players would be half off or we'd had tons of Wiis in stock, or just something people might actually want and are willing to be the first people in line to snap them up. Firstly, since our name change this summer, our newspaper ad was buried in with all the other similarly named mall stores, and most of the malls this year were not opening early, but instead closing late.Therefore most people didn't know that we were opening at six this morning, since in the past we usually opened at eight on Black Fridays. Secondly, other than 2-for-1 on select DVD box sets, we really don't have a damn thing to offer that the Best Buy down the road isn't beating the pants off of us in every other way -- and that includes Chinese Democracy.
Instead, we just had a simple, busy day. The kind of day we used to have most weekends when I first started working there four years ago. Plenty of staff, plenty of customers. People cherry-picking, and back then it was still okay to let them do so. Although I did have a lovely conversation with a nice woman in her fifties about the greatness of Aaron Neville, Otis Redding, and Joni Mitchell. I convinced her to buy, Clouds, Ladies Of The Canyon, and Court And Spark, and have her coming back this weekend to add Blue to her collection as well. She left thrilled to death with my service. I so love days when I have customers like that.
Dear God, our industry is in such sorry shape.
posted by Melissa at 9:31 PM
2 Comments:
Has anybody tried to sell back Chinese Democracy?
Actually one guy did try, but it's not built into our system so I couldn't. Although I did try! It would definitely sell if I could take it back. We are able to buy back Walmart exclusives like The Eagles, Journey and AC/DC, although we don't sell the new copies.
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