Let us give credit where credit is due. Despite the foolish things we've seen at retail stores where managers treated people inhumanely for their pathetic amusement, there were some stores that did things right. The Landmark Center Best Buy in Boston was one of the rumored sites of a PS3 midnight launch -- which ended up being true. Starting Wednesday people began camping out for the following evening's midnight event. It could have all gone bad, but thankfully there was some basic intelligence at work.
Witnesses say at 11PM the night before launch, the general manager of the Best Buy walked over to the already formed line and told them he didn't care what system they used to organize, but to figure something out. That's when the people waiting came up with a list and began doing roll call every hour. If a name was called and the person didn't answer, they were off the list.
In the morning a crowd had formed. Although there was confusion, the manager did take the list from the hopefuls who had spent the evening and pocketed it. The original intention was to begin lining people up at noon. The crowd clearly made that situation impossible now. By noon the police had begun showing up and the store was aware that they only had 40 of the expected 138 units on-hand. By 3PM the midnight launch was officially called off. The crowd had become unmanageable and there clearly weren't enough systems. The manager took the list which he had pocketed and began reading off names. People came up, showed ID, went inside and gave their phone number, paid and got a ticket to return the following day when the store opened. The remaining expected units were then raffled off. By the following morning, the other 98 units arrived, and launch went as well as could be expected. Kudos to those who saw a bad situation in the works and at least did something to fix it.
Know any other stores that deserve a shout-out for keeping things in control?
[Thanks to Ray A. Hernández]
(Update 1: Cleaned up some little things)
