Today was the first day of liquidation and it was crazy. I'm talking crazy lines for eight straight hours. In one day we surpassed our total sales for last week. I was so exhausted by the time my shift ended, and the crazy part was today most things were only 10% off. The marketing geniuses at Borders sent out this email saying that the clearance sales would be up to 40%. Gotta love those two words 'up to' that nobody ever seems to pay attention to. They just see that 40% and assume that the whole store is 40% off. And then the silly customers come to the store and realize that most things actually aren't 40% off, but since they're already in the store they start to buy things. What surprised me most were all of the people who only purchased one item after standing in the very long lines. If I came in to shop I would have left with a handful of items, simply because for me, one item didn't justify waiting in those lines. Kudos to all of you shoppers out there with that type of patience but for me, all that waiting time would not have been worth it for one item unless it was free.
Some people were so awkward too, like this one guy was literally staring me down the entire time he was in line. I could just feel his eyes burning a hole right through me. And not only was he staring but he had this super angry look on his face, like I slept with his wife or something. It made me uncomfortable; but then I ended up ringing him up and he was very polite-shocker. Then there was this girl, either late high school or early college, who was being rung up by the cashier next to me and she wouldn't stop staring at me. Finally I just turned to her and said, 'Hi how are you,' to which she didn't even respond. Burn, right? I mean you're staring me down but you can't talk to me? No worries, she was probably just an awkward high school girl, I just couldn't take the staring; it was like an ultimate awkward silence. Ultimate because it involved a lock-on stare without her saying anything to me. Oh the creepers that I encounter on a daily basis.
And another thing that was killing me: all of the people saying how sad they were about Borders closing and how they were really going to miss the store. Now I know there were countless reasons for our store closing, but one of the main reasons was that we weren't making enough money. Hey sad people, where were you fore the past couple of years when the company was on a downward slope? It's just funny how all these people are so sad but they could have actually prevented the closing by buying more merchandise. Now they're stocking up when the sales are mostly just 10% off. If they actually checked their emails they could have bought products for 30-40% off on a weekly basis, but no, only now they come in because of the going-out-of-business sale. Crazy people, you could have prevented this mess. A few customers even mentioned that they were surprised how chaotic and busy the store was. I wasn't surprised in the least, and I only expect it to get worse. Forgive me if I get repetitive but I'll probably have plenty of stories to mention for the remainder of my tenure at the bookstore formerly known as Borders.
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