A timeline to Potter-madness
Having stood outside in the cold in January waiting in line for a Nintendo Wii for/with my friends, I thought I understood the nature of obsession.
In fact, I understood nothing. Yesterday, on July 20-21, 2007, I had finished my 9-3 AM shift for the 12:01 AM release of the final installment of the Harry Potter series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. Here now a chronology:
11:25 AM: I’m still working my Friday 7-12pm regular shift and this is when the FIRST Harry Potter fan of the day asks where to start lining up for the book.
8:30 PM: I drive into work and already the store’s set up 2 lines for people outside, one for fans who’ve pre-ordered the book, and the other banking on getting it at one past midnight. Inside, it's filled with people loitering and as I’m fitted into my costume (I’m a Death Eater manning a booth…who says dark wizards can’t be bureaucrats?), plans are in motion to finish the last arrangements for the store. The skids of books were not to be moved to the floor until 11:50 PM.
9:30 PM: A co-worker’s cousin who has more than a passing resemblance to Daniel Ratcliffe got dressed up as Harry Potter for us…and was soon swarmed by those same girls for photos (…though since he was starting university in September, he hoped none of this ended up on YouTube).
10:00 PM – 1130 PM: We’ve finally moved the lines inside, which also meant the start of activities around the store. There are now more people than I’ve ever seen in the store, and I must admit, it feels a little bit claustrophobic. I don’t get a chance to see the buzz of activity around because my job is to pre-register people who’ve pre-ordered the book by giving out wristbands. The roaming magician we hired is a popular attraction, entertaining those in line with various card tricks.
11:00PM – By about now the girls at the front of both lines have decided to start cheers for every hour, half hour, 20 minutes, 15 minutes, 10 minutes, etc. for the countdown to the book’s release. And with each passing cheer, my tolerance for them lowers just that much more.
11:50 – 11:59 PM – The girls decide to hold a cheering contest between the pre-order and the regular sales line. By now I’ve a ringing in my ears that won’t go away and a headache. Earplugs would’ve been good right about now. Not that the timing helped, because the Skids of the much-anticipated books are now being moved out from our Receiving Area to it’s respective areas, with security guard in tow. That’s right, we hired security guards to protect books. These are pretty much J K Rowling’s Crown Jewels. Loud cheering ensues and flashes go off behind me as people photograph the boxes of books. Stop and think about what you've just read...
People are taking pictures of cardboard boxes....okay, you can resume reading now.
12:00 – 12:01 AM – People start counting down the seconds. I'm hoping that people won’t just rush us and steal the books, because really, 4 employees and a half-indifferent security guard would not be able to hold back a crazed mob. If only they authorized my Taser request…
12:01 AM – The book release arrives!
12:01 – 1ish AM – It’s a non-stop flurry of books, bags, and gift cards as my friend and I try to process people through as quickly as possible. Slight delays ensue as some people cut in lines and don’t have a wristband force me to stop the flow and check off their names. Mild irritation, granted, but we wanted these crazies out of our hair as fast as possible.
1-3 AM – The craziness is over! We actually get people out the door with their Precious in a little over an hour, which is pretty impressive. We had some stragglers left coming in to pick up pre-orders or make outright purchases, but for the most part, we could nonchalantly start cleaning up the mess customers made. And of course, it WAS a mess. But we only did a half-hearted attempt because we were tired and really didn’t care all too much. I don’t envy the people who had to come in this morning to clean up after us…I seriously think we need to shut down the store for a few days just so we could re-shelve and re-organize everything.
3 AM – We’re done, so we all get together in our costumes for some staff photos. I manage to find someone peering through our front door. It seems he’s wondering if he could still buy a copy for his little brother, whom he promised would have it by the time he wakes up. I tell him he’s about an hour too late and think, “shouldn’t have gone to the bar first and then try to buy the book…”.
3:30 AM – Finally leaving the store and I need FOOOOOOOOD! Just as we’re rolling into a McDonald’s drive through, they tell us it’s going to take 20 minutes for them before they can serve us because they’re switching over to the breakfast menu…my timing couldn’t be more terrible.
And so ends this madness. I get to sleep at 5 AM, knowing many people will still be up reading the Deathly Hallows. In fact, I’m sure some people are STILL reading as I type this. Who’s going to sleep well? JK Rowling for one, since she will probably by the end of this be double the financial worth of the Queen of England. The other is Heather Reisman, head of Chapters-Indigo, who will also have made a truckload of money.
Me? I get to eat a sandwich from Burger-King at 4 in the morning. Who’s the winner tonight, you think?
10 comments:
You're always a winner, Calvin ;)
Do I detect the undertones of proletarian dissent?
I just think at times like this, a little profit-sharing plan would be appreciated...
I'm not going to try and argue that the vast number of people in service/retail industries aren't under paid, but conversely how much did you or I realistically contribute to the profits of Harry Potter?
J.K Rowling wrote seven massively popular international best-sellers, and that's not easy. She took the risk of taking the time to write the first book and she had the energy to keep writing and to keep taking it to publishers even when she was rejected at first.
Heather Reisman started up and runs a nation-wide chain of bookstores. Nor is that easy. She took the risk to start a business - new businesses fail all the time. And she had the energy to take her operation national, plenty of people would have settled for one or a few successful stores.
Without Rowling there would be no book, and without Heather the distribution of the book in Canada would be significantly altered.
If either you or I hadn't shown up for work on Friday night, the profits of the book would not have changed.
Once again, you took what was a harmless and off-the-cuff remark and ruined it with your reason and logic. Thanks for that. :P
But I would also argue that Heather Reisman had a lower probability of failure since she had the backing of her husband and Onex Corp. As well, Chapters Inc. actually paved the way in Canada in attempting large-retail bookselling before she took it over.
Raising the level of discourse and thereby ruining fun is generally what I am all about.
As to your point:
Certainly Rowling deserves more of the profits than Reisman, and I believe the former is getting them - the free market seems to be working just fine on that score.
Also, while Heather's business savy and ethic may be open to dispute, which I would grant, that still doesn't change the initial point that regardless of whether Onex, Heather, or Chapters has the most claim to creating the Indigo-Chapters empire, neither you nor I had anything to do with it.
Finally, why is it that Indigo and Chapters employees are territorial about their store's brand vis a viz the other? (this is a general comment, and not one specific to you).
Even if there was loyalty to the separate chains originally, which is understandable, the merger was seven years ago. Given the rate of turnover, there must be only a fraction of employees left who actually remember the days when the two chains competed. Can't we all just get along in one big happy corporate family?
Department of own Questions Answered (I can just talk with myself, I don't even need you as an interlocutor):
The lack of competition in the Canadian book market necessitates the creation of artificial comparison and competition so as to have an employment-identity to relate to.
Indigo is SO MUCH BETTER than Chapters.
Your suggestion has merit. I'm not sure. I know that people at work are partial to the Chapters brand and the store design too. It's strange. I don't see it like that, but then I don't tend to see a lot of those things elsewhere...
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