Black Friday and Black Saturday

I didn't venture out at the crack of dawn in search of specials yesterday.  Instead, I ventured out at the crack of dawn to work at LifeWay behind the counter.  I got up at 4 a.m., got to work at 6 a.m., and we opened the doors to a hoarde of people who swarmed in, grabbing up specially marked items.

The nice thing about working in a Christian bookstore is that everyone behaved.  No one fought over copies of Jesus Today (and that was one of the "hot" items) or $10 Study Bibles.  And we did something different this year that our store didn't figure out until well into the Early Bird Specials time of 7 a.m. until Noon (it was probably around 8:30 or 9 a.m. before we figured it out).  Some of our specials weren't ringing up correctly...and that was because they were supposed to be Early Bird Specials for Black Saturday...not Black Friday.  We'd never had that before and I've been working for LifeWay for six years in Greenville and four years before that in Houston.  The ad was very confusing.  So we had to pull the signage and go around and tell all our customers in the hour-long line that what they thought were specials didn't happen until the next day.  They actually were all forgiving!

Out of the hundreds of customers I waited on, I had only one grumpy customers.  Mr. GrumpyPants didn't say anything rude, but his body language screamed "I don't want to be here!"  He drummed his fingers, stamped his feet, frowned, snorted, rolled his eyes while I checked him out at the register.  For a moment, I thought I was dealing with my sons when they were teenagers.  But Mr. GrumpyPants was probably in his late 40s or early 50s...and probably in need of a nap.  Not bad, not bad at all for Black Friday.  I have gotten much ruder customers on a regular workday.

While I don't love Black Friday because of all the craziness, I do love working in a bookstore.  I love seeing what sells and what doesn't.  I often can predict correctly.  We had a bunch of books on sale for crazy prices...$1.99 for a Karen Kingsbury double book, for example.  I usually wait all year to buy some books and movies, because I'm pretty sure they'll be offered super cheap on Black Friday.  So, after my shift was over at 3 p.m., I picked up some excellent deals on books that I've been wanting to read for a very long time.

With the busy Christmas season on us, I may have to wait until January to read them.  Now *that* is really hurting my personal bunny.