Black Friday

So its clearly apparent that our country is in an economic crisis, and I have not felt it until I worked Black Friday at Armani Exchange at Tysons Corner. I was one of the unfortunate ones to have to close down the store after the craziness of Black Friday. Now I was not expecting too much of a madness, considering the given economic downturn, so I basically assumed that noone would really be shopping. Well, Iwent in at 4pm, which was my scheduled time, and walked into a SEA of bargain shoppers, and lets say just say that Armani Exchange sale usually is not THAT big a deal. I was definitely WRONG! The sales were definitely a huge mark down due to the significant drop in sales, and the company is trying to make up what they lost. On top of the sale mark downs, a promotion of 30% off any full price merchandise was also another opportunity to lure in customers. So, when I walked in, the first thing I noticed other than the sea of customers in the store, was the piles and piles of clothes on top of tables and on the floor. In fact, I overheard one customer who walked in, and mumbled, "from classy to trashy." I seriously could not believe it. So I asked my manager why the store looked the way it did, and basically it came down to the lack of associates we could have for the day. Basically, a concern the company had was spending more on payroll than actually making the money they needed. So, he explained how the store was only allowed to spend about 10.8% on payroll, or else they would be spendning more than actually making it for the day.
Experiencing this, it was definitely apparent that the economic crisis is affecting retail stores. Although aware of this from the get go, it was my first experience with it. The store closed at 10pm and we were not finished putting the store back together until 2am. Of course, if there were enough associates, it would have defnitely made more of a difference. What I did not undestand was, why the store did not come up with other solutions, considering the high volume that day. Possibly, keeping a limited amount of sales associates throughout the day, and than at the end of the night bring in more associates for the cleanup and replenishment. All I can say is that I am unsure of whether or not other stores of this calibre experienced troubles like we did, but it was quite apparent that Armani Exchange is definitely feeling the pains of the economy. Hopefully something will relieve it for the upcoming holiday shopping days before Christmas.

A couple of photos of what the store looked like: