| Summary: | 11 theconcordian.org • December 11, 2014 Black Friday employees beg for decorum amongst shoppers BY KALEY SIEVERT ksiever1@cord.edu Black Friday came and went in a flash. People camped out, stood in line for hours on end, and scrambled for the best buys. Yet, in a privately owned bou-tique, Black Friday wasn’t a day of chaotic shopping. Crystal House was filled with a unique array of clothes and ac-cessories including hand painted leather bags called Anushka, charm bracelets and Necklaces from Denmark called Troll Beads, and bags made out of woven seat belts, called Harvey’s Seatbelt bags. The smaller boutique is locat-ed in a strip mall off of the Foley bridge in Coon Rapids, MN, and draws in its regulars along with the occasional crowd from the neighboring Sammy’s Pizza or AMC theatre. I worked on Black Friday at the Crystal House Boutique; the place I have been working for three years. According to “Black Friday By The Numbers” on account-ing- degree.org, in 2011, 86 million people shopped on Black Friday, and 89 million shopped in 2012. According to the Black Friday Yearly Spending on statistic-brain. com, the average amount of consumers that shop on Black Friday is 307 million. This Black Friday was the first I had ever worked. Despite the sale we were having and the large amount of consumers that were expected on Black Friday, it was a lot more relaxing than I had expected. I have heard my fair share of horror stories of endless lines of customers, merchandise splayed out and displays demolished at other businesses. Yet, working at a bou-tique turns out to have its perks. “Crystal House is easier than any other place you will work at on black Friday, because it’s smaller and not as well known,” said Katie Nylin, a fellow co-worker. One of the reasons why the boutique isn’t as well known is because it is privately owned. Two older women created Crystal House to add some needed happi-ness in their lives. The boutique is meant to balance out the hard times they experience in their long-term health care business. Nylin and I worked the 2 p.m.- 9 p.m. shift. During this time we had sporadic moments of 10 or less customers milling through the store. We sold a lot of merchandise and did well, but we never found ourselves over-whelmed with a stampede of cus-tomers. Nylin has worked on Black Friday before in food service, but not in the boutique. “It was busier than a normal day [at Crystal House], but it was nothing we couldn’t handle,” Ny-lin said. Nylin listed a few Black Fri-day shopping etiquette that she felt all consumers should know. “Have patience on the custom-er service people, for the love of God,” Nylin said. “They are do-ing their best.” There was the occasional “Do you have anymore shoes in this style in this size?” or “Can you get something down for me?” from customers, but there were no signs of rudeness or chaos that can often be associated with Black Friday shopping. Most of the customers on Black Friday were regulars and were excited to see how the bou-tique was decorated for the holi-day season. The store was filled with the chit-chat and the quiet laughter of the customers as they visited and admired the sur-rounding lights and tinsel that added to the decorated store. Nylin also said that it was im-portant for people not to crowd each other while shopping or while waiting in line. “I have been in lines where people have been right up against you and it feels like you have a monkey on your back,” Nylin said. Despite Crystal House’s some-what humble size, and numerous types of merchandise, there was no crowding to be seen. There was never enough people to fill the store completely at one time and crowds came and went in small waves of time. To top it off, Nylin said that people must remember to be courteous. “There is no need to get nas-ty,” Nylin said. “People can still be human on Black Friday.” Nylin suspected that a lot more people would come on Small Business Saturday, because Crys-tal House is a small business. When Saturday came around the six hours I worked, there were customers coming in and out of the store non-stop. Our sale had gone down from 40% off to only 25% and yet, we had a lot more customers. So, despite the chaos that may have occurred in other stores on Black Friday, Nylin and I were able to enjoy a relaxing shift. Lifetime Moorhead resident takes pride in maintaining ice BY BENJAMIN GISLASON bgislaso@cord.edu Outdoor ice is synonymous with the state of Minnesota, and for Moorhead Park Forestry Department Manager Larry An-derson, it always has and always will be a part of his life. Ander-son has been with the Parks and Recreation department in Moor-head for 42 years, but his history with outdoor ice goes back even further. “I grew up in Moorhead, and I played hockey. When I was a kid the rinks were packed,” Ander-son said. “If only kids now could see what we used to play on. We used to call the rinks hockey pens because they looked like cattle pens.” Anderson took his passion and implemented it into his career, and in many ways is the forefa-ther of outdoor ice in the city of Moorhead. He recalls how poor the ice was during his childhood and set out to better the ice qual-ity for future skaters. “You had to learn to skate and jump over the cracks in the ice,” Anderson said with a chuckle. “I know what (ice conditions) should be like and what they used to be like … the maintenance has gotten a lot better.” Maintenance of an outdoor ice rink is more than meets the eye and entails more than just splashing a few gallons of water and letting it freeze. There are catch basins that act as drains in many of the rinks to allow for drainage of unwanted water into storm sewers after melting. Lighting and boards are also a necessary part of outdoor skat-ing rinks, and since Anderson first arrived on a frozen ice sheet, he has seen some big changes. “Before, everything used to be taken down. Now we put up per-manent rinks,” Anderson said. “When I was a kid it was so dark you’d lose the puck so we put the new lighting up which a lot of the neighborhoods weren’t excited about.” So, Parks and Recreation moved back the closing times of the rinks to 8 p.m. The eight current outdoor rinks in the Moorhead area, all built in 1989, are maintained by a staff of five full-time employees. All rinks include identical warm-ing houses for skaters to find re-spite from the bitter conditions and are fitted with on-site atten-dants. According to Anderson, flood-ing usually begins in November. The water is donated by Public Services of Moorhead unlike most other water services the Parks department uses which re-quire payment. Anderson is very thankful for the donation consid-ering the amount of water used in this process. “I always have to tell (Public Services) when we start flooding, or else they will be concerned they have a leak somewhere,” An-derson said. “They always track their water towers, and they’ll see a drop when we start flood-ing.” “Some towns that have flat surfaces use sprayers and have an inch and a half of ice,” An-derson said. “Our rink areas are bowl shaped so we use flooding … we have areas that have nearly a foot of ice.” Anderson described how the flooding process makes for a lon-ger lasting ice surface. As Janu-ary arrives and the sun beats down, surfaces with thinner ice develop problems that Moorhead rinks will not. The ice in Moorhead is smooth and crisp this time a year. Ander-son hopes to see more and more people pouring onto the ice to en-joy what gave him such a thrill in his youth as well as seeing people relishing something he has put so much passion into hopefully for years to come. BY MADDIE MALAT Morningside park is just one of the many parks in the area with a outdoor ice rink. Recently, the Special Projects and Initiatives Fund approved money for an outdoor ice rink on Concordia’s campus. Students would be able to skate on campus without having to travel far, even though there are various rinks in the immediate vicinity of campus. SUBMITTED BY KALEY SIEVERT Above: Crystal House boasted 40 percent off deals throughout the boutique on Black Friday. Left: Nylin oversees the checkout area during her relaxing Black Friday shift .
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