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Hello, everyone! My name is John McGrail, I once worked 17 hours on a Black Friday as a teenager, and I believe that if you’re not learning, you’re not living. Today I’m talking about the retail season that’s upon us and how we all might just survive.
Happy Black Friday everyone! Well, at least that’s when I’m writing this episode. As I type there are literally millions of us across our great lands (yes, I’m looking at you too, Canadia) fighting, scrapping, and clawing for that once in a year kind of deal. So, let’s take a moment to fun fact our way through this observed day of shopping extravagance.
The holiday shopping season is crucial for the U.S. economy because around 30 percent of annual retail sales occur between Black Friday and Christmas. For some retailers, such as jewelers, it’s even higher — nearly 40 percent. On Black Friday 2015 an estimated 74.2 million people went out shopping. What’s any other day we can organize ourselves to do anything on that level. Heck, even our own election only garnered about 134 million votes—and that’s not even on the same day as early voting stages the votes over a few weeks! The Thanksgiving weekend in 2015 saw $102 million in sales, which might seem staggering but not really compared to 2012’s $147 million in sales. Smartphones and tablets are used much more than in the past to find the bargains. Less than half (45.4 percent) of those who own smartphones, and just about two-thirds (47.4 percent) of those who own tablets, use them to purchase products online. Gift cards are becoming more popular. Eighteen percent of holiday shoppers use gift cards. Almost half of people received a gift card on Christmas morning. That’s because people are more likely to ask for gift cards than clothing, DVDs, or jewelry. (Source: “Gift Card Statistics,” CardCash.com, November 24, 2016.) The National Retail Federation reported that stores would hire between 640,000 and 690,000 seasonal workers. That’s down from the 700,000 workers they said they’d hire in 2015, and the 713,780 they did hire in 2014. That’s much less than the 764,750 workers hired in 2013. At least it’s not as bad as the 263,820 workers hired in 2008. The day was originally called Black Friday because so many people went out to shop that it caused traffic accidents and sometimes even violence. The Philadelphia Police Department coined the phrase in the 1960’s to describe the mayhem surrounding the congestion of pedestrian and auto traffic in the downtown area. Now retailers have turned the phrase to mean the profitability of the day, as in being “in the black.” These facts are brought to us by the blanance.com.
Maybe you are like the woman who pepper-sprayed a Wal-Mart crowd in 2008 to get a Wii 60% off and I’d love to have your best Black Friday tale as a part of the Friday Forum. The Friday Forum is your opportunity to share with me and the rest of the Stuff I Learned Yesterday community. Your Stuff can be anything up to fifteen minutes and can be in your voice or written. You can add your Stuff to the Friday Forum in several ways—by calling 3048372278 and leaving a voicemail, by going to www.goldenspiralmedia.com/feedback and uploading an audio file, or by using the provided speakpipe widget; or, you can type out an email and send it in that way.
Now, here’s what I learned yesterday:
I’ve had a job pretty consistently since the age of 14. My first job was Arby’s and that was a summer gig and it was a great time of learning everything needed to help make fast food happen for folks on a daily basis. After a while of doing that I moved on to a different job at Belk Department Store. I started out as a sophomore in high school and continued off and on through my freshman year in college. The store was at Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. One major event that occurred during my time at the store was that it was originally built as a two-story store and because it was on an end cap of the mall they were given permission to remodel and go up to a three-story store. It was a fascinating remodel to watch and work through while it came together.
I loved the work at Belk. I would work a couple of evenings during the week and generally both Saturdays and Sunday afternoons, as the mall was usually open from 1:00 to 6:00 back in the late 1980’s. I was brought on as a Sales Associate in the Young Men’s Department. My job was to sell the very latest in fashions to my fellow “young men,” who generally couldn’t care less. Most of my customers were usually moms dragging their kid through the department because they were tired of their son wearing the same pair of jeans and the same two t-shirts every day. The job was great as well because if I’m honest I’m a huge people watcher. Even today I love to watch folks as they go back and forth and I love to put their stories together in my mind or watch them act silly or watch the couples who are so in love you can see it from a mile away. So, when I wasn’t busy selling or putting displays back together that had been rifled through or taking care of price reductions I always got a full plate of people watching.
One of the other parts of the job that was pretty funny was that as a Sales Associate some customers would assume that I was somewhat of a fashion consultant so as they put some combination of an outfit together I would get a question quite a lot of “Do these go together?” or, “What do you think of putting this with that?” Now, always wanting the customer to be right I would always answer that they had made a great choice and that I would certainly put those together. Now, you should know that I don’t see colors in the same way that you might. “Colorblind” is not the proper term but some colors come together in such a way for me that I don’t have a real distinction to them. Brown and green are very close to me, blue and purple is another example. So, in my answering of these questions I may have sent some really bad outfit choices out into the world. If you’re a victim I can only apologize.
Like all retail there were busy and slow times. It comes with the territory. I was brought on as the school year was going during January as I had my own license and car in the middle of my sophomore year. So, by the time the biggest time in retail came around I had more than ten months experience. I had also had some shifts that were in different departments like men’s suits, children’s shoes, the children’s department and so on. So, as a junior in high school, the week of Thanksgiving approached. I had heard rumblings from the more seasoned Sales Associates that the end of time was drawing neigh. I “pfffffffd” and said, “Ha! There’s no way it can be that bad. I’ll handle it just fine.” The seasoned ones just chuckled and Mmmmmmm Hmmmmmmm’ed me. The sales ads had been printed and mailed out. They were in the newspapers, they were all over TV, the store would be opening at 6:00 am and be staying open until 11:00 pm, which was ridiculous compared to our usual 10:00 to 9:00 schedule. Who in their right mind would get themselves up to be here at 6 in the morning, I thought. I had never done any Black Friday shopping myself nor had my parents or sister ever done this as a thing so I had no personal experience with it.
I got up in the middle of the night-at least what it felt like-and had myself at the store by 5:30. We all took our battle stations at our registers and the doors opened. The people had come, and they were savage. They were laser focused, they were not forgiving, and while they were non-violent (thank heavens), it wouldn’t have taken much for it to turn ugly fast. I got many (probably mis-matched) outfits out the door that day. I was asked to stay after my scheduled shift and work in other departments because the Associates had had some sort of nervous incident.
Six months later a literal tornado would come through the mall parking lot. My department had an exit door out to the parking lot. At one point I was holding the two glass doors together by the handles trying to keep them from getting ripped from their hinges and flying off to hurt someone who might happen to be outside. It wasn’t my greatest moment judgment-wise because I could have so easily been hurt. It wasn’t nearly as crazy an experience as that first Black Friday.
Here’s what I learned:
As much as we shoppers hate the Black Friday and holiday craziness of hunting all of the things we feel like we need, I implore you to be kind to those who are trying to help you. I’ve seen two of our listeners post specifically about their fear of what this season will bring as they are working in retail trying to get through Black Friday until Christmas. As we come into the season of peace on earth, goodwill to men, it’s hard to identify it in the ways some of us go after those prizes that seem like the answers to our holiday happiness. I never could have imagined a world of amazon and other online shopping sites as a high-school student but I sure would have appreciated it. It is wonderful that so many are given the opportunity to work during this season and as someone who now today counts on the health of our economy to help my own clients I understand how vital these holiday sales are. Please remember that all of these folks in retail are hopefully trying to do the best they can under extremely stressful situations. Let’s do our part to be the bearer of goodwill. And, always get a second opinion on whether a combination of clothes goes well together if you have questions. That’s just a little free advice.
I’m John McGrail, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
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