The Table of Crap

I worked in retail my first job out of college. I spent the first nine months of the year buying knick knacks for the store and the last three months working myself into the ground. Our store would lose money each month until Halloween costume shopping kicked in. We’d then ride the wave into Black Friday and, of course, the Christmas shopping frenzy.

I learned a couple of things in retail: 1. I never want to work in retail again 2. Beware the “Table of Crap”. Retail is wonderful if you enjoy working long hours on most weekends for third world wages. But it was the “Table of Crap” that I remember most about my couple of years in retail. See, not every item I’d purchase throughout the year would turn out to be a best seller. So we’d toss all the crappy items nobody wanted into a big pile and wait for Black Friday to arrive. On that morning we’d pile a table full of crap from Walking Willies to Brad Pitt key-chains and Lava Lamps. We are talking bottom of barrel here as this was the junk we couldn’t move at up to 75% off. We had to wait until the end of year to mark any item down more than 75%.

The Black Friday shopper is a different breed of shopper and one that I got to know well while at this job. This person isn’t looking for the high quality or best rated items of the bunch. You won’t see them carrying around a Consumer Reports or giving a hoot about reliability. No, this savvy cheapster is looking for the outright best bargains regardless of need or practicality. I was amazed the first year we rolled the “Table of Crap” to the front of our store and watched normally mild manner adults fight over size XXXL Big Johnson T-shirts, outdated snow globes and ugliest candles you ever laid eyes on. Maybe these people had office Christmas parties to attend and they wanted to get the “white elephant” gifts taken care of first.

The day after Christmas was also a fabulous day for snagging the bargain hunter. For a retailer, the perfect storm was finding a bargain hunter in your store, the day after Christmas, with gift certificate in hand. People that wouldn’t think twice about spending their hard earned cash on a set of miniature inflatable sumo wrestlers are suddenly buying them up like iPod Nanos all because of the gift certificate mentality. I’m convinced that when people shop with a gift certificate they leave their brain at the door. It must feel like Monopoly money and what better time to buy that fart cushion than when it’s no skin off your back?

So as you fight the mall mobs at your local Best Buy or Toys-R-Us, enjoy the holidays and look for the Table of Crap. It will be there waiting for you.