So, today was the big day of our Breaking Dawn release party. I actually worked a split shift, coming in to work from 11-2 and then returning at 7 for the big event. I had two separate dreams last night that I was late for work. It was pretty insane. It turns out we had over 3600 people show up for the party. There were people everywhere. We had different events going on throughout the night. I was in charge of monitoring the body/nail painting station and also the fortune telling station where they were reading palms and tarot cards. These lines would get out of hand pretty quickly if left unattended for too long. There was a mad panic when all of a sudden the painting station line split into two lines because a lot of people wanted their makeup done by a particular volunteer who was doing "cool" stuff. While I was making sure the situation was staying under control, the line for fortune telling would get out of hand. At one point we had marked the end of the line with an employee and blocked it off so that people wouldn't continue to line up. When the employee left to go help at the registers, the line burst down several aisles with 4 different ends. We had to redirect the line and explain to the customers that we had stopped the line 20 minutes previous and if they wanted to wait in line, they might not be able to get their fortunes told before we closed. Below are a few pictures from the events I was monitoring.
Fortune Telling
We also had a costume contest and a bad bridesmaid dress contest going on. I didn't really get to watch much of it since I was trying to keep an eye on my events so I don't have any pictures except a few stupid ones. There were a lot of people watching the costume contest. I'll try to get some better pictures later from someone at work.
We also had a trivia contest and gave away prizes every half hour including an autographed bookplate signed by Stephanie Meyer. We also hid a replica of Bella's engagement ring in the store which was worth about $80. It was mandatory for all employees to dress up in costume or wear red and black. Below are a few of the more creative folks I work with.
Rachel (one of our employee's that was doing tarot cards)
Hunter (a vampire, he's got blood splattered on his shirt and red eyes, don't know if you can tell) he's one of the merch managers
Courtney (part of the vampire mafia) she's our community relations manager
Shannyn (on the left is a merch manager) and Sylvia (on the right is our Bargain lead) are both vampire hunters. Complete with holy water, wooden stakes, crosses, and thigh blade. Shannyn also had a tattoo on her back saying "I staked Edward".
Christy (a vampire) is one of our head cashiers. All these red eyes were spooking me out.
Above: the vampire mafia living in perfect harmony with the vampire hunters.
We had so many people lined up to get the book at midnight. The line stretched all the way down the end of our shopping center. Keep in mind, we have Office Max, Burlington Coat Factory, Pier1, and Outback next to us and the line wasn't single file. It incorporated the entire sidewalk and this was just for people with reservations. We had another line for non reservations going the opposite direction. Some people left because the line was pretty intimidating and they probably thought we would run out or they'd have to wait several hours to get the book. We also found out that Deseret Book, who is around the corner from us, came through our lines and convinced several hundred people to come get the book from them. Those Bastards! I was surprised at the speed we were able to get through the entire line. We had everyone rang up in little over one hour! We also had plenty of books to spare. I'm telling you, we know how to handle big events like this. Every time our store has done one of these huge releases we have found more ways to make it better and faster. I had taken a few pictures of the line outside but the one below is blurry and I couldn't get the other ones to upload. Too bad. You can't really see how huge the line is.
Below is a picture at the front of our store. Again, I couldn't really capture the amount of people we had come to this party.
There are a few funny things that happened during the event. One is that a lady actually wanted help with cook books of all things. Hello! Can't you see there is something going on here? There was also a guy that came up to me and said he had just stopped by the store to buy something and was getting stress out by everything that was going on. I look down and guess what books he had! Twilight and New Moon! What an idiot! There was also an incident where we had to call the ambulance because someone was "hyperventilating". Apparently an emergency like this happens every time we do an event. A lady came in to buy the book after midnight and screamed when she got in the door, while she was in line and then when she got her book. One of the little girls who was with her (probably about 10 years old) announced "This is my aunt, not my mom!" and then "You're embarrassing me!" There were of course people screaming "Edward!" throughout the night and just plain screaming for no reason at all. Overall it was a fun experience and something you really have to see to believe. In the end I don't understand the hype, but it's making us a lot of money.
So I'm an idiot and couldn't understand why it keeps posting my photos so small. Turns out I have to select the size as I'm unloading them on the blog. I'm too lazy to redo all this now so check back later when I have time to repost the pictures in a larger size.
No comments:
Post a Comment