Being the guy who set up everything in the electronics department for almost seven months, a few small advantages were mine alone. For instance, I was the only one who knew the lockout codes for the DirecTV and the demo DVD player. These components sat inside the cabinet of an entertainment center borrowed from the Wal-Mart furniture department, and one evening while I was still working there, I had found keys to the cabinet hanging inside the unit. Since I ran the department at the time, I put the keys on my keyring, then quickly forgot about them. I was also the only one who knew the CMOS and screensaver passwords to all the demo PC's in the department. But my real advantage was the knowledge that there was an extra working phone line underneath the main CD rack in the center of the department.
Thanksgiving night, the store closed from 4:00 pm until 12:00 am. At 12:01, I entered the store and set to work on my plan. The morning manager never got around to filling my position, and 80% of the workforce had the night off for the holiday, so the store was my playground.
First, I glided over to the demo machine cabinet, and verified that it was unlocked. It was, since I was the only one with keys. I went to work on the DirecTV system, locking out every channel except for "The Hot Network," a hardcore pornography channel. While in the cabinet, I inserted a special Video CD I had burned that afternoon into the demo DVD unit, then I put a special VHS tape into the VCR. I turned off all the units, then locked up the demo cabinet and grabbed all the remote controls from the front drawer. After that, I turned up the volume on every TV as high as it would go.
Still not satisfied, I moved over to the PCs and changed a few settings, then rebooted them to lock in the passwords. Finally, I took a cordless telephone from the department and plugged it into the aforementioned vacant store phone jack, hiding the base of the unit with boxes of inventory. I ran over to the pharmacy section to plug in the remote charger and phone receiver so that it would be fully charged for the next morning. Everything in place, I left the store with a gigantic smile on my face.
Naturally, the store was FLOODED starting at 6:00 am that morning, the time at which all the special sales were to begin. The traffic in and out of the store was absolutely astounding. There were lines specifically to wait for a place in another line. Around 11:00 am, I showed up and easily breezed through the store. Due to the volume of customers, I blended right in, and not one of my former co-workers spotted me. I went over to my rigged electronics department to do a final survey of the area. All the televisions were on, screens black, with a small message at the bottom of each screen that read "signal unavailable." All of the demo PC's had rolled over to their screensavers, which scrolled in blue text on a red background "I AM A LUCKY COMPUTER! TAKE ME HOME!" Moving the mouse or using the keyboard would not disable the screensaver, since they were password-protected. Everything looked ready. I ran over to my secret hiding area in the pharmacy, the only department not ravaged by the holiday shopping crowd, and pulled out the cordless phone. I tested it, and it worked. I entered the code for an overhead page and blew into the receiver a few times. Lo and behold, my little puffs were clearly audible over the intercom.
It was time for the festivities to begin.
