I read the tragic story about the woman miscarrying and the Walmart associate getting trampled to death at Walmart. From the perspective of someone who has worked there for over 10 years, I'd like to share my side of the story.
We call it Blitz, and freight starts coming in a few weeks before the big day. This day, the month following it, and Inventory day are basically what our year revolves around.
We do try to prepare.
I am a toy department manager, one of the hardest hit departments on black Friday. My job is first of all to make sure I have on order the hot items that I need in bulk. Then it is my job to plan where these items are going to go for Black Friday. A lot of rearranging happens.
I plan for months to try to get as many of these items in the largest quantities I can. This is for a couple reasons. I am not sure really their order of importance, but
- To make sure there is enough product so that people aren't fighting. our suppliers will sometimes only allow us to order limited quantities or the ordering option will be turned off completely and we end up with whatever home office/the buyers/whoever decides to send us. That is why there are usually only like 5 of the laptops or the big tvs. It's really not our fault on the store level. We can not order all the merchandise ourselves. Some of it is predetermined.
- To make money. Albeit, not much, our profits are slim to none for Black Friday. Things are sold almost right at cost. Trust me, I can see the profit numbers on the scanner, and they aren't that great for Black Friday. So yes, you are really getting a deal, at least in the toy department.
Before Black Friday the main thing the management team stresses to us is safety. We don't want to see one of our coworkers fall in battle. We don't want customers bleeding from head wounds caused by flying blenders. We do want it to be safe, but it is TOUGH.
In our store, upper management decided that this year they would close the store at 5 pm. on thanksgiving and reopen at midnight so that there would be no massive throng of people waiting to kill the first associate they run into. So this year customers got maps of where everything was going to be (which I helped make in excel, I think it went rather well, mapwise) so that customer's wouldn't be running around screaming looking for the items they needed.
So, people got their maps, and lined up at the pallets where the merchandise was that they wanted.
This next part was stressed to us repeatedly. At 5 oclock, cut the shrinkwrap, make sure it's off the floor and GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY.
We stand within the alcoves created by aisles and wait for customers who have questions. We try to stay off the floor unless we need to refill something, or someone needs help lifting something. We travel through what become "back aisles" since customers are mainly shopping in the main corridors. We use our walkie talkies and just try to keep communication up and smile and help people.
We know people are crazy shoppers. We know it's mob mentality, and blitz isn't exactly us associate's favorite day of the year.
It's true we don't get paid much, and the people who make our merchandise get paid even less, but on a store level we try to be as safe as we can.
I think in the future, more stores will do this where they open at midnight to allow people in, and then cut the shrink wrap at 5. It prevents the stampede, and both of the deaths from today could have been prevented if there wasn't some perverse joy in watching people stream into a store and run each other over.