Counterproductive Policy Part 3 (BLACK FRIDAY EDITION) & Late Night Shippers

Granted our store wasn't quite as busy as the picture portrays but Black Friday is still busier than any other day of the year.  The Black Friday lameness started on Wednesday the night before Thanksgiving.  Because we aren't open at all on Thanksgiving we have to setup everything so we are all ready to go on Black Friday.  We were almost done setting up the display tables and moving printers to front and all that was left to do was put up the signs that were already printed.  In a perfect world this would have been awesome since we closed early on Wednesday and this meant we should have left shortly after the time we normally closed.  All was going well before our SM decided to pull EVERYTHING from the top stocks to fill the table with useless stuff that people aren't going to buy.  This is why they were up in the top-stocks in the first place because no one wanted to buy any of it.  So we had to put out all this stupid shit and then create signs for all them.  Now normally shooting signs isn't a big deal, you point the pricing gun at an item, shoot it, and move on to the next.  But because the pricing had to be for Friday's deals we had to manually input every item into the computer and change the date to Friday.  This was extremely lame and we ended up leaving almost 3 hours later than we were supposed to.  I also told the SM that only 10% of the shit would actually sell and I would be the one of the people putting it back away on Saturday.  Turns out I was 100% correct in my hypothesis.

Friday morning the techs had to be in the store by 5AM while other associates had to be there at 5:30AM.  We had a quick meeting letting everyone know how everything was going to go down.  The way the voucher tickets were given out was completely stupid since they were separated into different folders so when someone waiting in line wanted a ticket we had to go find the associate that had that ticket it was completely backwards than it should have been.  Each associate should have carried a couple of each item so it was easily accessible when a customer needed one.  Before the store opened I mentioned to my fellow associates that the PC setup package gift card was actually a great idea because basically it wouldn't hold up the checkout line, we could just ring it up and the customer would be on there way.  Normally we would have to get all the customer's information and then proceed to ringing out the customer.  But the card was meant to avoid this so they can return anytime to redeem their PC setup.  First customer being rung up wanted the gift card and once the item was scanned it asked for a work order number... Meanwhile about 20 or so people are behind the first customer, I suggest putting in an arbitrary number and that worked for that transaction, we weren't so lucky for the next couple and had to actually make a work order using our tech computer.

Another part of the counterproductive policy of this company is the service "envelope" we use to take in computer repairs.  I say "envelope" because that is what it says on it but the damn thing is just a double sided sheet of paper that is 11x17 in size.  Something that they said would be an actual envelope in Q3, it is now Q4...  Anyway on this "envelope" it asks us to get the customer's story as to why they are coming into the store for service.  On this "envelope" it basically asks the customer THREE times why they are here.  Then we are suppose to run a system analysis while we are talking with the customer.  The analysis is the most retarded thing ever created.  I can gather the information the analysis gathers in less than a minute while this dumb scan takes 20 minutes to finish.  The only difference is the virus check.  Mind you this exact scan is performed at the end of each service so once again it is another thing I find to be completely counterproductive.

So onto our famous Saturday Sign night.  Surprisingly there weren't too many signs that had to be put out.  We actually had another associate scheduled to get everything done, which of course is always a relief.  Around 8:50PM this family comes in and goes to the Copy Center because they need to have a whole crapload of packages sent out to eight different locations and had to have all the items packaged.  The poor girl working tonight, L Honda, was told that she could leave at around 9PM when everything was done.  Of course she didn't actually get to leave until 9:30 once this family's packages were boxed and shipping labels were created.  The worst part about this, L Honda explained to me, how these packages won't actually have to ship out until Monday night.  So it is a wonder why the hell these people HAD to come in on a Saturday night right as we are closing to send this shit out.