The other night, Mrs Nutz and I jumped at a chance to save some money doing some of our mandatory shopping. My Mother-in-law is a bargain shopper, and a pretty darn good one at that. Since this is the first time I've mentioned my in-laws, I would like to say that there are MANY horror stories out there about Mother-in-laws; however my wife and I were both fortunate to marry into great families. Anyway, mine is a bargain shopping whiz, and she likes to make sure that we are made aware of the deals. She informed us that our local Dan's Grocery Store was going to be having a moonlight madness sale. Basically from 8 PM to 11 PM they would have bargains on potatoes, steaks, and a few other things, plus a discount at the register. She invited us to go shopping with her, even though this store was a little out of the way for us. Considering that we just got paid, and it was time to go grocery shopping anyway, we accepted her invitation.
Somewhere back in the deep recesses of my mind, I knew that it wasn't a good idea; but I just shrugged it off. I worked in retail during the holiday season for several years, and I have very vivid memories of how crazy things were, but that was always from an employee's perspective. This was my first real experience at seeing how crazy things were from the shoppers perspective, and shoppers are INSANE!!!
The night started off for us at 7:30, when we arrived at the store and started shopping for the bargains. A rational person would think that the managers of the store would realize that this advertised sale was coming, and would try to have all the items in stock. Not this manager. One of the sale items that we were looking forward to was a 5 lb sack of potatoes for $1, and we were fortunate to get there just as the clerk was bringing them out... all 12 bags of them. I felt sorry for the clerk, it was like bringing a pizza into a weight-watchers convention. We got ours and ran before we could attract attention.
Our next shock came when we got to the Coke 2-liters. They had them stacked in plastic crates, and this one idiot was literally dumping them into his cart. At this point, I am NOT exaggerating. He was picking up an entire crate, holding them over his cart, and then dumping them. His cart was overflowing with bottles and he still kept going. As we were trying to grab a bottle or two before he could get to them, a couple of them fell to the ground and almost hit Mrs. Nutz. She gave him a nasty glare, which seemed to confuse him. I was just anxious to get away from him before one of those bottles exploded all over.
Another sale item was New York steaks for $2 per lb. My Mother-in-Law was waiting with the rest of the crowd to grab some, and the store was limiting them to 3 packages per customer. She was grabbing them off the shelf, and people were literally trying to grab them out of her hands.
By about 8:15, we'd had our fill of the whole experience, so we waited in the check-out lane that stretched all the way back to Hawaii, and told ourselves that we would never EVER again bargain shop like this. It made me shudder to think of what stores are like the day after Thanksgiving. I know that the economy sucks right now, but I'll spend the extra $30 we saved if that means that we can go grocery shopping without wearing safety gear.
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2 comments:
Retail after Thanksgiving sucks! I worked at Macey's for 3 years. The day before Thanksgiving, after and before Christmas are the worst. Take that sale, but stretch it from 1-10PM at night...essentially the same thing.
While I do have some terrible memories of working in retail around the holidays, this really was more than I expected. I guess retail in a video store around the holidays is a little less insane than working in a grocery store. Yowza!
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