I went shopping at several stores early Black Friday morning, and I’ve decided to give awards to various stores based on their performance.  These awards are in word only; no prizes or trophies will be presented.

Most Disorganized Store goes to the Lindon, Utah Walmart. While the Walmart sale was to begin at 5am, we walked into the store at 4:30 to find people already walking around with products in their carts and already lined up to check out. They had isles completely blocked off, making it hard to get through the store to the items we were looking at. We even found a few cashiers checking people out before 5am. I also observed that every laptop sold needed an override at the cash register for a serial number which wasn’t available because people couldn’t pick up a laptop except from a trailer around the back of the store only after they paid for it.

Worst Planning also goes to Walmart. The front page of their Black Friday advertisement was promoting their price matching policy. While price matching is a great way for consumers to get good prices, price matching at 5am really slows down already long lines. We were behind this guy who had to price match some DVDs, and it took like 5 times longer for him to check out.

Most Ridiculous Line goes to the American Fork Target. We casually walked in looking for sales on games, but then casually walked out when we saw that the line looped through two thirds of the store. Since we didn’t actually wait in line at Target, we give a dishonorable mention to the next door Old Navy. Although they opened hours earlier, the Old Navy associates seemed disinterested in checking people out speedily. Not that the line was long, it was just slow. They problem was compounded by the fact that they were trying to get people to sign up for an Old Navy charge card. They were telling people they could go to the front of the line if they were to sign up for a new charge card. What this was really doing was punishing the people who didn’t sign up for a card, by making them wait longer in line behind the people that did sign up for a new card.

Best Deal Hiding goes to the Staples in Orem. Sure we didn’t get there when it opened, but we couldn’t even tell if they had the items we were looking for.

Best Handing of Chaos goes to Best Buy. Although they had masses of people, they had employees available to help you find things, the checkout line was reasonable, they had maps to hand out, and they generally seemed pretty organized. Other stores might look to Best Buy’s handling to improve their performance for next year’s awards.