Thanksgiving/black Friday

We had a great time Thanksgiving day. Tom's parents spent the day with us and we enjoyed having them over. It was quiet (well until they started talking about the US government bailing out the auto industry and then Tom got loud hehehe).

Jessica and Brittanie both had to work on black Friday. Jessica said her store wasn't that busy. But Brittanie works for JCPenney and she said it was HORRIBLE! She was 5 minutes early getting in the parking lot but punched in 10 minutes late. It took her that long to find a parking place! When she stepped out onto the sales floor she was stunned. She is very pessimistic, like Tom. But it was worse than she had even thought it would be. There were people everywhere. She also found that people are rude and inconsiderate to retail workers. She said people would pick up stuff and if they weren't going to buy it, they would just throw it anywhere making the sales floor a disaster everywhere you look. She went into the dressing room and it was wall to wall clothes. She started helping a coworker fold clothes that people tried on and weren't going to purchase. She said the coworker was sitting on the floor folding and the pile of clothes was so high that you couldn't see her in that pile. Well while she was folding, a woman asked Brittanie if she could clean out the dressing room so she could try on something. So Brittanie got up and went into the dressing room and found it 3 feet deep on all sides with clothes people tried on and just left in the dressing room, even though there are signs everywhere asking you to put clothes you don't want either hanging back on a rack or if it was folded, it goes in a basket, both of which are in the area in front of the dressing rooms. How hard is that? But not only did people not put the clothes back but they left the trash from their lunches all over the clothes so alot of new clothes got dirty. Brittanie was not happy! She had to ask the coworker who was folding clothes to help her clean out the dressing room. She said when the coworker opened the door, she said "Oh my God!" She couldn't believe it either.

Black Friday also brings out criminals. Brittanie had to work the register for an hour and a half and during that time 4 men came up seperately to return a black dress that they had purchased for their wife, girlfriend, or mom that didn't fit. By the 4th one, Brittanie was suspicious. She told the guy that her computer was messing up (it wasn't) and she had to call a manager. The guy got nervous and didn't want to "bother her because she had lots of customers waiting." But Brittanie had the dress in her hands and insisted. The manager came and Brittanie stepped aside and explained the situation to her so the manager took the dress to the back and ran the UPC and found that the dress was never purchased. So she checked Brittanie's other returns....the 3 other guys who had come up previously to return black dresses....and none of those dresses had been purchased either. So she called mall security and had that customer removed from the store. Brittanie's department is at the entrance to the mall and the other men who did it before him were out there waiting for him. When they saw him being lead away by mall security, they took off.

By the end of her 8 hour shift, she had cleaned up all the dressing rooms and the area in front of the dressing room, which was no small task. She said she felt accomplished but had to admit that when she first clocked in, she wanted to cry because just Wednesday night she spent her entire shift getting things looking great for black Friday. She closed that night and the store was closed on Thursday. So when black Friday started, the women's department, which was what she was responsible for, looked outstanding. But by the time she clocked in at noon on Friday, it was all tore up. She got off at 8 last night and when she left everything looked great. She was afraid of what she would encounter when she clocked in today. JCPenney takes care of their workers that day. They had McAlister's Deli cater food for everyone that worked. She said it was delicious and the JCPenney managers would check on everyone during the day and make sure they were ok. It is an extremely stressful day to work retail.

JCPenney is having another big sale today so they are preparing for round 2. I am sure it won't be anything like it was yesterday but this whole weekend is going to be rough!