Shoppers Stage Rousing Return Performance

Unless you’re an inveterate shopper--or a retailer--it was not a pretty sight.

By 7:45 a.m. Tuesday, crowds of bargain hunters spilled onto the streets as they waited for the doors to open at Bullock’s and Nordstrom at South Coast Plaza. And once inside, within an hour, there were snaking lines everywhere--outside fitting rooms, inside restrooms, at cash registers and even to get on the escalators.

The scene was repeated throughout Orange County on Tuesday. Day-after-Christmas sales brought out mobs of customers with money in their pockets and bargains on their minds.

“When they opened the doors, it was like a swarm of ants coming through,” said a sales associate at Nordstrom in Costa Mesa.

“This is the day when you see people in full battle gear, in their Nikes and Reeboks,” said Maura Eggan, spokeswoman for South Coast Plaza. “They’re a very intrepid bunch.”

So at Mervyn’s in Anaheim Plaza, more than 100 customers were lined up and waiting when the store opened at 8 a.m.

And four hours of the crush was quite enough, thank you, for one sales clerk at Bullock’s in MainPlace/Santa Ana, who was overheard telling an associate, “I’m going home. My mental health means more than this job.”

By and large, what the hundreds of shoppers were after was more of the discounts and markdowns that have characterized this year’s heavily promotional shopping season. Predictably, gift-wrap, Christmas cards and tree ornaments attracted the biggest crowds--and were the first to fly out the door--just about everywhere.

After that, many shoppers sought out the markdowns on apparel.

“My wife bought just about everything for me on sale before Christmas,” said Tom Robertson, 25, an accountant from Irvine. Even so, Robertson himself was standing in line at South Coast Plaza’s Nordstrom on Tuesday with $26 shirts marked down to $18 and $42 ties priced at $30. “These are just good sales prices. I come every year at this time,” he said.

“There’s a lot of good selection this year,” added Karen Zeholla of Riverside who was bargain-hunting Tuesday in Costa Mesa. “It seemed in years gone by, there were bits and pieces and everything was picked over. . . . The sales seem better than usual.”

“It was elbow-to-elbow on the escalator, but this is really the day to buy,” agreed her husband, Tom Zeholla. “We’ll probably be here all day.”

Of course, not everyone was buying more. Some were at the malls and strip centers to bring back merchandise that was the wrong size, the wrong color or just plain the wrong gift.

“This is wool and I can’t wear wool. And my daughter just won’t wear this,” said Laura Runkle of Anaheim, pointing to several bags before battling her way through the crowds at MainPlace.

Still, Runkle said, besides exchanging she planned to spend much of Tuesday “looking for the big bargain.”

For some merchants, an unusual number of returns seemed to come the week before Christmas. “People seemed to be trying things out and bringing them back early,” said David Parker, manager at the Target store in Orange. So by Tuesday, Parker described the volume of exchanges as “about normal.”

For others, though, the crush has just begun. “People are working today,” said Debbie Curtis, store manager at Mervyn’s in Anaheim Plaza. “We’re expecting (returns) to be extremely heavily on Saturday and the weekends.”