Black Friday 2006

What did you do for Black Friday?

I have written about Black Friday before. I have been doing the crazy "get up in the early morning and line up for bargains" thing for quite a few years now, but this year wasn't nearly as successful as some past years. I blame it all on Circuit City. With the way they were working this year, there was no way that I could make it to 7 stores by 8:30 am like I did in 2004. Then again, perhaps it's not all Circuit City's fault. I think the crowds have been getting worse annually. It wasn't nearly this bad in the good old days! (Last year's huge nightmare was Staples, but I don't think I wrote about that). I also haven't been showing up over 30 minutes before opening, but even so, it shouldn't be as bad as it was today.

This year, many of the stores opened at 5 am. (There were some places that opened on Thursday night, other places at midnight, but I don't think any of those places were near me). Even the mall was fully open by 6 am, with some stores choosing to open at 5. (Honestly, this opening earlier year by year thing is going to have to stop eventually or everyone would open at midnight. Judging by my sleep schedule, this might actually be preferable...)

We got to Circuit City by 5 am and the line was snaked around the parking lot and barely moving. Luckily, the temperature was in the high 40s, so it wasn't unbearable. Just boring. Fewer than 10 customers had left the store by the time we got in the doors. What did that mean? That there were hundreds of people in the store. Which is not all that large. And remember how disorganized and poorly run it was in 2004? Not much about Circuit City on Black Friday has changed, other than the fact that there were many, many more people there this year. (Side story: I remember one year way back (ha ha) when Best Buy had opened at 6 and Circuit City had opened at 7, and I was waiting on line in the freezing cold outside Circuit City. This was probably their most efficient year as all the free/good deals were right in the front of the store for a grabbing frenzy).

Let me set the scene describing the layout of the store without all these people. You enter and there is a lot of empty space, taking up a decent part of the store. There is the customer service counter on one end, and diagonally across the empty space, 2 cash registers and a Coke vending machine. The car radio department is on the left side. Once you cross this area (car radio and check out), which takes up about 1/4 of the store, you hit all the other departments: wireless, computers, cameras, movies, music, home theater, TVs, gaming, etc. Can we start off this story by saying "inefficiently designed"? (And it's not like the inefficient design makes it more aesthetically pleasing. It doesn't).

Now let's put the hundreds of people in and explain the register layout. You have those 2 registers in the empty space. Maybe 3 registers at customer service. But haphazard lines leading to the registers. Another register by car radios, another few smack in the middle of the DVD and music areas (yes, among the tight aisles). Registers along some of the borders of the stores, by the TVs, etc. What did they do, try to insert registers wherever there was empty space? That's what it has always felt like. Except, magnified to this level with all these people, the entire store was composed of lines. Everywhere. In every direction. All heading to some unknown place. And the worst part? None of them moving. Barely a few inches every few minutes. Completely chaotic. And people trying to shop having to squeeze inbetween the people on the lines and not very successful at that.

In short, a nightmare.

Plenty of people in all the stores I went to that had big sales were like, "wow, this is so mobbed, this is so crazy." But even if you've never gone Black Friday shopping before, it should be assumed that it would be crazy crowded. They do news stories on this! But Circuit City deserved all the comments, because while other places were crazy, that was just a nightmare.

We had gotten into Circuit City around 5:20-5:30. By 6:15-6:30 or so, I had found about half the things on my list and completely given up on the rest. Since the lines weren't moving at all, my dad dropped me off at Best Buy and then went back to Circuit City. I figured by the time I got out of Best Buy, it would be light out and I could just walk to wherever everyone else was if I got out before them. But I was just heading to the store. What were the chances of that?

Well...

When Best Buy is more efficient than Circuit City? Chances were pretty high. I was in and out of Best Buy in about an hour. The line moved efficiently and at a decent pace. I was out of the store before they had even hit the registers at Circuit City. And it's not like there were less people - I don't think there were. It was just efficient.

Unbelievable.

Like I said in 2004, Best Buy had learned from their difficulties the year before. Layouts make sense. There is one consolidated checkout line (with the exception of certain departments, but from what I could tell, they weren't causing massive chaos, although it might have been a longer wait if you wanted certain products) and the nice guy with the yellow balloons marking the end of the line. The representatives were excellent at crowd control, and not having people uselessly get on extra lines they didn't need to be on. In short, I was pretty satisfied. Especially since I found out about some DVDs my mom wanted while I was already on line, but I found them all in the GPS and vacuum departments while on line, abandoned by others. That was fun.

Hmm. This entry has changed from a summary of my Black Friday to "How Circuit City is Chaotic and Inefficient." But it's true! I left Best Buy, walked to the mall, went to about 8 different stores, bought a Christmas present, checked out whether the food court was serving lunch food at 8:30 am (and yes, they were, thankfully) and then rested and people watched outside Bath and Body Works, all before my parents and Alvin got to the mall. I feel terrible that they were stuck at Circuit City in that unpleasant miserable experience.

Bath and Body Works, lunch snack, dropped off bags at home and then went to Target (one of my favorite favorite stores). Then, just as I described to people at work, it was time to go home for a nap! I estimated that I was usually home for a nap around 1 or 2 after all that strenuous shopping. Well, watched Grey's Anatomy and then took a nap. What a heartbreaking episode.

But back to Circuit City. Because we had to go back there after our nap because of all the things they did wrong. In addition to the general layout problems, inefficiency and chaos I mentioned before, here are some other things that went wrong:

- Sale items were ringing up at non-sale prices. For example, I got a TV DVD set that should have been $19 but it was still ringing up $40. Shouldn't this have been taken care of before today? Knowing how busy it would be and that people were specifically going there for sales?

- Rebates weren't printing out for rebate items and this was forcing people to have to find other representatives and to get on additional lines. Not to mention the fact that some receipts weren't even printing complete enough to be able to be copied for rebates.

- They had a promotional camera if you spent a certain amount of money, yet if you hit the threshold, no one mentioned it. How is that a "thank you" for your business? Judging from the number of people price matching at Circuit City, maybe everyone should have gone to price match at Best Buy! The line moves so much better there.

One last note - if anyone from Circuit City is reading this, I realize that this is not the case at every store, because the experience some relatives have had at other stores was more similar to my experience at Best Buy. But judging from the number of customers at this store, it was an absolutely horrible shopping experience to be conducted the way this was. Not to mention the fact that some of these people might have tried to avoid the chaos if they could order online starting Thanksgiving day, as was mentioned in the ad. However, many people said they couldn't even load the page. There has got to be a better way than what was going on today.

And to end this entry happily... Black Friday ended with sushi. Yum. :)