Shop Till You Drop : Customers, Workers Fight Fatigue in the Store That Never Sleeps

The customer-service line snakes past sporting goods, stretching clear back to electronics.

And it never seems to get any shorter.

Dozens of late-night shoppers, high in anxiety and low on holiday cheer, have waited for hours to reach the layaway counter at Oxnard’s Wal-Mart store.

Some sit on chairs taken right off the sales floor. Others joke about sending out for pizza. Some hum along with Christmas tunes pumped over the intercom.

By 10 p.m., it has become clear that neither the customers nor the employees will go home soon.

“The store is trashed. I’ll be here all night,” assistant manager Scott Green says 14 hours into a shift that wouldn’t end until early the next morning. “Christmas is only a few days away and we’re hanging on for dear life.”

Such is the price of working the night shift at a store that never closes.

When most of Ventura County shuts down for the night, Wal-Mart only slows to catch its breath before charging full speed into the next day. The store, one of the county’s few 24-hour retail outlets, sells hundreds of thousands of dollars in merchandise each day.

But it is the graveyard shift--where shoppers dodge cleanup crews and a small army of workers restock shelves--where Wal-Mart is reborn night after night.

“We basically put the store back together over the course of the night,” Green says.

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The effort starts in earnest about 11 p.m. Shopping carts filled with a mishmash of merchandise are wheeled to the front of the store. The stray items are sorted, plucked from one basket and tossed into another.

“Where’s crafts?” an employee asks, holding up a clutch of dried flowers.

“Who’s in paper and chemicals?” another sales associate asks.

The sorting process goes on for several minutes until every item is accounted for and headed back to where it belongs.

With three shopping carts in tow, Mary Jane Waldron navigates narrow aisles that lead to the ever-popular toy department.

The Camarillo resident was one of 2,000 job-seekers who lined up outside the Oxnard Civic Center over the summer when Wal-Mart announced it had jobs to fill.

Her son Christofer, 14, doesn’t like her late hours. She started work at 8 a.m. and should have been off at 5 p.m. But as midnight approaches, she continues to resupply shelves stripped bare of merchandise.

“It’s really wild right now,” says Waldron, sporting a red-and-white Santa hat. “We need to put it all back on the shelves so it can be messed up again tomorrow.”

Shortly after midnight, three hours after getting in line, Herlinda Mendez makes it to the layaway counter.

The line is especially long this night because Wal-Mart required Christmas shoppers to take merchandise out of layaway by Dec. 15 or risk having it returned to the sales floor.

Mendez has deposited $15 toward a doll house for her 9-year-old daughter, Sara Griego. But the computerized cash register isn’t showing her deposit.

She leans on a big cardboard box and bites her bottom lip. She checks her watch. Another 15 minutes pass before the glitch is corrected.

“They told me the store was open 24 hours, so I decided to come back,” Mendez says, referring to an earlier visit to the layaway department. “When I came back, I was totally shocked at the size of the line.”

*

It is nearly 1 a.m. when Narcisa Sadonski and Angela Hilliard finally decide to call it a night. Despite hours of browsing, their carts are loaded with bone-tired children and little else.

“My eyes are rolling to the back of my head,” Sadonski tells Hilliard. “I am beat and I have to be at work at 8. Are you ready, please? I’m tired and I want to go home.”

But after a brief discussion, the two women make a U-turn from the checkout line and head back into the aisles, determined to conclude their Christmas shopping.

“I’m going to fall asleep,” Sadonski says, shuffling away.

In the glow of a giant hamburger-shaped clock, sales associates, as they are called at Wal-Mart, section off the 150,000-square-foot building with yellow tape, the kind strung at a crime scene.

They sweep and mop and wax the floors. It will take until daybreak to clean the entire place.

In the early morning hours, the toy department is by the far the busiest place in Wal-Mart.

Dave McManus, 30, of Oxnard browses through the store’s selection of coloring books. McManus, who sports a ponytail and a long beard, also wears a Santa hat.

He says he removed blinking Christmas lights from his beard shortly before entering the store.

“I was also leery about the hat,” McManus says. “I didn’t want to be accused of shoplifting.”

After leaving a nearby bar, the unemployed machinist says he decided to stop by Wal-Mart on his way home to buy Christmas presents for his niece and nephew.

“I heard it was open 24 hours,” he says. “Only my niece and nephew get presents this year. The rest of them get a smile and a ‘Pass the potatoes’ at Christmas dinner.”

Joining McManus in the toy department is Loriann Ogle, 24, of Camarillo.

Ogle, a Wal-Mart customer service manager, decided to do some shopping for her 15-month-old daughter, Taylor, after her 12-hour shift.

“They make everything back off of me,” says Ogle, who spends sizable portions of her paychecks at the store. “Right now is the best time to shop. I do this all the time.”

*

Just after 2 a.m., the line leading to the layaway counter is finally down to one customer. Armando Leza, a 35-year-old United Parcel Service driver from Ventura, is the last to reach the counter.

He tried waiting in line twice earlier in the day, but decided to return on his way to work.

“I have to be at work at 2:45 a.m.,” says Leza, who owed only $9 on a variety of toys for his children.

Cheers and applause ring out when Leza is gone.

“Next customer in line,” says Maria Guzman, who has been working layaway since 3 p.m. “If there is nobody, I can go home. Going once, going twice. If nobody says anything, I’m leaving.”

But she is a long way from her departure. The area still needs a good cleaning in preparation for the next day.

“I don’t even want to go to sleep because I don’t know if I’ll be able to get up,” says Guzman, who is scheduled to return for a 7 a.m. shift.

Green, the assistant manager, says the Christmas season will take a toll on his workers, most of whom are new to the job.

“It’s hard late at night. Your energy level drops,” says Green, a 25-year-old recruited out of Cal State Long Beach. “It’s at the point now where the associates feel tired, they feel worn out. But in a few more days it will be all over.”

*

Shortly before 4 a.m., Corey Robinson blows into the store and asks about boating equipment. The 23-year-old Ventura resident is shopping around for an outboard motor for his father.

Robinson says he was working late when he decided to stop by the 24-hour outlet.

“My dad wants one of these for his boat,” Robinson says, handling a sleek machine. “I’m just in here doing some Christmas shopping.”

An hour later, Sylvia Rodriguez, 38, puts the finishing touches on a towering monument of popcorn tins that now adorn the front of the store.

“I hope there’s not an earthquake,” she jokes.

The Oxnard resident is another of those hired as a result of Wal-Mart’s recruitment drive last summer. She was brought in two months ago as a night shift stocker, specializing in foods and housewares.

“I’d rather work at night than during the day,” she says. “I get a lot more things done and it’s a lot quieter.”