Adventure at Circuit City

It was announced yesterday that Circuit City will be going out of business nationwide to help pay off it's creditors. While I feel particularly thankful for the stability of my job (there are unfortunately 34,000 CC employees who will lose their jobs), we headed to take advantage of the sales! 

The store was to open at 10am- we arrived in the parking lot at 9:35. It was packed! The technogeek in me was giddily amused and excited, as you can tell by the pic above, snapped by my new BlackBerry. As we waited in line, I heard one man jokingly yell "I call the 52" plasma!". We technogeeks laughed appreciatively.

The doors opened at about 10:05 and the masses made a beeline. Our family's goals for the day: a laptop for Michael and a hard case & screen cover for my BlackBerry. We spent the next two hours waiting in line, but scored! I not only found the BlackBerry accessories I was looking for, but also two DVD's- 50 First Dates (which Michael often says describes his life with me- I may be a bit forgetful at times) and Working Girl, the awesome 80's flick about corporate world starring a young Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford & Sigourney Weaver. (Thanks for the early birthday presents, Mom & Dad!)

After spending a good time of that searching the web on our phones for price comparisons, Michael settled in on a Sony VAIO laptop. It will do everything he needs it to do for school, not to mention that it has a built-in webcam, which will come in handy for keeping in touch this summer when he studies in London for a month. We'd been planning to get him a laptop for school sometime this spring and the closing sales worked in our favor- we saved about $300 off the original price! 

The good folks at CC hadn't been prepared for the onslaught of technogeeks. There were only two cashiers up front, one tech support guy and another guy in charge of computer sales. I felt particularly bad for the girl who checked me out at the customer service counter- she had to help back up the cashiers, as well as answer the phone. While I was in line she took a call from someone who was angry he/she couldn't get through to the cell phone department. When she (politely) explained that they were swamped today, the customer apparently said "Well, it's no wonder you're closing!" and hung up. She looked like she was about to cry and it was only 10:30am!

Needless to say, it was a lonnnnng line at computers. The elderly gentleman behind us had driven 100 miles to purchase the same laptop we were buying. As Michael was being checked out, I meandered over to the cage where I'd seen the sales associate get our computer and luckially, there was one left for the man. I whispered to him that there was one left and he said "I've never travelled so far to wait in line to spend money!". He was cute. When we finished up and the clerk was ready for him, he said "Do it again!" (meaning the same computer, warranty, etc.) We wished him well and headed out.

So for any of you technogeeks out there, Circuit City is definitely the place to be! From what I understand, they'll stay open until their liquidation is gone. Although the sales prices may go up this week, it's kind of a crapshoot- we *could* have waited and paid less, but there was always the chance we'd go back in a few days and the laptop would be gone.