Bella Coulter, Staff Writer

By Bella Coulter

I scuffed my shoe against the shiny, tiled floor and stared at the organized display of assorted baking goods in front of me. I swear I could hear crickets chirping. 

I sigh and look over at the customer service desk, trying to catch my friend’s eye and beg him to come over and talk to me. He stood talking with a customer, totally oblivious to my turmoil.

I turned back to the display and nod as I come to a conclusion: I am going to die of boredom.

Now, you’re probably wondering, what does this have to do with Black Friday? Isn’t this supposed to be a story about the crazed lunatics that bust out of their house as early as the night before to fight anyone and everyone to get the products they want? Where’s the action? The intrigue?

Trust me, I was asking myself this same question.

Apparently, whenever there are stores like Walmart and Best Buy that have toys and technology on sale, no one wants to go to their local Harris Teeter. So, while everyone was out shopping to their little hearts’ content, I was stuck standing in a hideous uniform, twiddling my thumbs until my shift was over. 

This post-holiday slump for Harris Teeter actually poses quite the predicament all on its own. After the holidays, we experience a huge drop in sales, which means management has to cut hours pretty severely to compensate. This means that people like me (who are trying to save for college and other endeavors) get booted to one shift a WEEK. I can’t live like that.

I tried talking to my manager, but she said there was nothing she could do. Her boss was cutting everyone’s hours because the store simply did not have a need for a lot of cashiers after the holidays. She told me that my best bet would be writing my name and putting it in our schedule book; according to her, people called out all the time, and if I wanted more hours, I should write my name and phone number in the book so that people will call me first whenever someone else calls out. 

Considering I desperately needed the hours, I thought this was a great idea. What I failed to realize was how badly the schedule was messed up, and how often they would use this to their advantage. 

It’s not even been one week since I wrote my name down, and they called me every single day. I worked Friday, they asked me to double my shift on Saturday, and then they called me in on Sunday. Sunday, they straight up called me and said, “Can you come in right now?” 

So, being the goody-two-shoes that I am, I dropped everything I was doing, raced to the store and proceeded to work for the next five hours. To put it simply, I am exhausted.

Anyway, this long-winded explanation was just to say that Black Friday did not live up to my expectations. When I saw my name on the schedule, I was expecting crowds, shoving, fighting, SOMETHING. Alas, there was nothing, but empty aisles and quiet registers.

So, if you want an exciting shift on Black Friday, don’t work at Harris Teeter. You would probably get more lucky at some place like Walmart. 

If you do work at Walmart on Black Friday, however, Godspeed my friend. Godspeed.