It was like a feeding frenzy!
The CVS I work at is in the process of being remodeled. It's not a company wide thing, just our store. And because we rent our space, it's not a major gut and re-do, just moving stuff around, replacing shelves, if we are lucky we might get new carpet.
As a result, nothing's where it should be, things have to be moved to the back room or new shelves so that their home shelves can be moved, some stock has to be stored up on risers on top of the shelves, some of our stock is just GONE for the moment. And, we have Christmas stuff arriving each week, starting with 2 weeks ago....basically everything's a mess.
SO, my manager wanted Halloween GONE. G-O-N-E! He marked down all the decorations and accessories 50% off last week, before Halloween. Monday morning, everything-costumes, makeup, candy, all of it went 50% off.
Apparently, it wasn't going fast enough. I walked into work at 6pm on Wednesday and was informed by the shift supervisor that before my boss at left at 5:30 he said to mark it all NINTY PERCENT OFF and to just modify the price, that it would take too long to actually change it in the system.
So, myself and the two shift supervisors grabbed a few bags for ourselves (knowing what would happen) and then started telling people the stuff was 90% off. We did not in any way hoard anything, just so you know, just set aside some for ourselves because we didn't have time to buy any right then.
And it was a good thing we did. O. M. G! I have seriously never seen anything like that in real life before. We didn't even have signs printed yet before the SWARM began. People were at least polite about it, but it seriously reminded me of that movie "Jingle All The Way" where people were trying to get that one specific toy and like rushing through the doors and stuff. People were buying candy BY THE CART FULL. Most bags were either 40c or 60c, and people had like $30 worth of these. There were actually people running into the store after being called by a friend or neighbor. After the initial swarm, we had a second big wave about 45 minutes later-someone had gone next door to the Fazolis to eat after getting their cart full and had told them over there and people from other there rushed over to our store, INCLUDING EMPLOYEES! Like, the Fazolis manager came over while on shift!
We had several shelves worth of the stuff left when I came in at 6. By 7:30, it had shrank enough to be loaded into about 6 or 7 carts and placed up front. By 9pm, all the bags were gone. The only stuff we had left was about 10 boxes of pumpkin peeps, 5 pks of these generic candy fingers, 8 Snoopy candy pumpkins, and a small amount of other odds and ends. Not even enough to fit in one cart seat.
It was the craziest thing I have seen in working retail...and I have worked retail most of my adult life, including Christmas.
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