‘Twas the Day After Christmas

December 26, 2019December 26, 2019Michael 1 Comment

All right everyone, gather around over here. We off to a late start today and this stuff has to be done by opening of business tomorrow.

You, up on the ladder, since you didn’t bother to come down when I said to gather around you can stay up there and pull down those silver and gold streamers and the fake snowflakes and get the red ribbons and hearts up. Do we have any cupid cutouts you can hang at the end of each aisle? Good. Get those up too but not that last row. Make that one green and find the shamrocks we had up last year.

I need someone in the window to get Santa out of the chimney and wrap the trees up. Fine, you’ll do. After you get the fat man packed away find the most of whatever we have and make a big pile in the middle of each window and change the signs from Holiday Sale! to Year End Clearance! What? No, don’t change the prices! Are you new here?

Now then in the candy section, any candy canes, foil wrap bells, those Christmas packaged candies, and the prefilled stockings get loaded up into 2 or 3 shopping carts and tape a 50% off sign on the front of them. Yeah, I know last week they were 75% off. That’ll teach people to try and hold off for a better deal. So what if somebody notices. If they remember next year we can get rid of all this junk before Christmas Eve and not have to scramble like this. After you get those shelves empty there are a bunch cases of those sappy heart shaped boxes of candy that didn’t sell last year. Put them out, mark them up a third higher than whatever they were then mark the whole section 10% off.

I need somebody to check the ad copy before it hits the emails tomorrow. It should say FLASH SALE, ONE DAY ONLY, PRICES GOOD ON ALL ITEMS* FRIDAY THROUGH TUESDAY and then in the real small letters “some exceptions apply.” Last week somebody used a readable size for that and three customers actually wanted to know what wasn’t on sale before they got to the check out lines.

Okay then the cards and ornaments let’s make buy 1 get 19 free. I know we’ll be cutting our profit down to under 300% but we need the space for the sunblock and flip flops that we have to put out next week. What? Hmm. Yeah I know those guys down the street have their leftover gift wrap 90% off but I figure it doesn’t go stale and we’re just going to have to buy more next year. Look, most people are using gift bags for presents any way. Just stuff whatever is left in the fake chimneys when they come out of the windows and push it all to the back corner of the stock room. We’ll put them back out in October.

You two, take this list and go through the store and anything you find that looks like a match bring to the guys in the crafts section. That’s the list of Olympic sports. Yeah it’s time for them again. I don’t know exactly, July something. Whenever they are we’re running out of time. Corporate sent some people to stencil something that looks almost like the real logo on whatever we got. We need to get started with that so we’ll be ready when we pull whatever Dads and Grads crap that didn’t sell off the shelves in April.

You all have your jobs to do. Any questions? New Years? Get a few bucks out of petty cash and go down to the dollar store and buy some noise makers and cardboard hats. We can set up that end caps right across from the cash registers. We can probably make a pretty penny on some last minute shoppers. Good thinking!

Now let’s get out there and remember, sales sales sales! That’s the reason for the season!

Have I Got a Deal for You

August 13, 2015August 12, 2015Michael 1 Comment

Last weekend my daughter was lamenting the fact that the stores were starting to advertise fall fashions. Fortunately, she reported, they were also beginning summer clearances so it wasn’t all that terrible that the season was being rushed along a bit.

It’s always been that way. Valentine specials show up right after New Year’s; Easter Sales go on sale in February; Memorial Day Specials pop up in early April; Fourth of July Sales are here and gone by Flag Day; Labor Day Back to School Sales get started at the end of July; Halloween candy is displayed around the start of the school year; Black Friday opens around Halloween; Christmas Sales deck the shelves on Columbus Day; and the End of the Year Clearance flyers hit the mailboxes a week before Thanksgiving. Next year will probably start a week earlier.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing. It really does become a plus when you can buy this season’s fashions at bargain basement prices while still in the season. But then does that mean the demise of bargain basements?

I suppose that bargain basements are already dead. And that’s a shame. They used to be THE place to shop for the folks who couldn’t afford Saks, Lord and Taylor, or Tiffany. And back a generation or two that was almost everybody. The bargain basements were where back to school meant it didn’t have to be hand-me-downs, where grills and patio furniture and outdoor life came to life for middle class America, where Christmas got to overflow from each child’s stocking. They might have all been the previous year’s fashion but who cared. Jeans were jeans, chairs were chairs, and toys were toys. And all of them hidden away in the department stores’ lowest levels. Even when the big retailers moved to the suburban shopping centers there still was a certain square footage devoted to the bargain basement.

Now the bargains are relegated to a few clearance racks pushed to the back of a department, behind next season’s meticulous displays. They are a few handfuls of what didn’t sell, the few pieces management is willing to part with this season rather than storing in back rooms to be brought out next year or auctioned off to remainder stores.

Those days of the bargain basements were the days when real savings were passed to the public. Today if you want a real savings you have to know where your closest time machine dealer is. Of course, if he’s not running any good specials when you get there, ask for a test drive and go back one holiday. You’ll find your deal there. Or is that then?

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

Move Along Please

March 21, 2013Michael Leave a comment

We’re starting to notice something in the stores that we’re patronizing. There are crazy people out there. Allow us to explain.

Just a few days ago we were in a grocery store. Not one of the mega marts that has everything from fresh dragon fruit to Lint Lizards. This was a much smaller version that had everything from soup to nuts as long as you didn’t mind the canned variety of either. It’s not unusual in either version’s produce section for people to shake, sniff, thump, or rattle the offerings in search of the freshest of the fresh, or in mid-March to find the least out of season depending on the origin of the well-travelled fruit or vegetable. And at the meat display one will check out the marbling of the well fatted full grown steer.

On our trip to that store on that day we were in search of ground beef. Not much you can tell from ground beef that isn’t on the label – its pre-grinding primal cut, fat content, weight, price, and the date ground, hopefully matching the date to be purchased. Yet there in front of the entire display of ground beef, shopping cart angled to extend across the complete linear footage was a lady carefully examining each package of ground beef. Well, perhaps not each package but several of them, and each of them quite carefully, looking them over as if to determine that the fat content printed on the label wasn’t what her eyes were able to discern. We wanted to say “Move along lady, it’s all from the same cow and whatever you’re making isn’t going to be that fabulous or you’d be up at the other end where the cows are a little more put together. “ But we didn’t and eventually she found one that had the color, size, shape, or fat content of her liking and we snagged ours.

It was on that same trip that He of We decided it was time to spend a couple of dollars on our retirement plan, also known as the Power Ball. So he stopped at the window where some young man was robotically entering the numbers of the daily number players into the state lottery computer and exchanging “Sure Thing” dollars for “Can’t Miss” numbers. The line moved quickly, most of the hopefuls hanging their hopes on the quick pick versions of their numbers du jour. And then there was just one in front of He of We. And that one began with “Gimme Big Four, 1-2-3-4, fifty cents straight, 40 times,” and the young man punch the number in once, hit the quantity for 40 and we waited while the machine printed out 40 identical tickets. “Anything else?” “Yeah, gimme the Daily, 1-2-3, a buck straight, 40 times.” Again we waited for the little machine to gasp out 40 more identical tickets. “Anything else?” And this was when He of We said “No, you’ve reached your limit. Are you trying to make certain that if you should in your wildest fantasy actually hit both of those numbers that by spreading out your 60 dollar wager the IRS won’t figure out you’ve won around $20,000 because you did it 50 cents at a time!? Now, move along please.” Well, actually He of We just thought that and breathed a sigh of relief when the big spender asked for one more pick but more conventionally taking just the one wager and then passed a handful of bills to the still robotic young man.

Yet another shopping outing of ours put us into the main aisle of a national chain of stores that claims to provide items for the bedroom, bathroom, and other rooms beyond those two. It seems odd that almost half of the store is dedicated to kitchen items and that kitchen isn’t in the store’s name but then we didn’t name that store so what do we know? In that main aisle we stopped to peruse one of the several clearance shelves. It is quite thoughtful that the store tags its clearance items with the reason for the item being on clearance. ‘Last one,’ ‘demo,’ ‘returned,’ ‘only 1 of a pair.’ All very helpful. But one of their reasons was “broken.” It was there that we noticed that many of the items on the shelf were tagged with that very reason. A clock was broken. A storage box was broken. A lamp was broken. It would seem that if an item is broken, that to sell it means the store doesn’t place much value on its customers’ intelligence. It’s almost as it they are saying, “If you make it cheap enough, people will buy anything.” And from the picked over look that the clearance section had, it seemed that many people had at least semi-seriously considered many of those items before deciding to move along, with or without encouragement.

So we’ve noticed that not only are the customers getting a little batty but so are the shopkeepers. Actually we don’t mind a little insanity in the shopping place. It makes for some lively dinner conversation and provides us with a bit of caution to not be too batty out there ourselves. But then, as long as you don’t dally and keep moving along, not many will notice.

Now, that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you?