Auditors Nightmare

Ok so a little about myself. Years ago when asked my profession I would say I was an accountant by education but an auditor by training. Those years have passed but those instincts and annoyances I believe will never leave me.

On friday i read the news of circuit citys demise, and while i feel for the employees, I have become a closeout liquidation specialist. That same day I did a scavenger preflight. As a good scavenger you always have to fly a few circles prior to the feast in order to see the lay of the land, and make sure you don’t get eaten. I wanted to see what the regular prices looked like before the liquidators showed up. See what some of you may not think about is that the liquidators are there to make money. One of the first things they do is jack up the prices on some items way above what their original or msrp cost would be.

Most consumers see a discount price and they think “oh this is discounted I must be saving”. Ladies who shop at Kohls are a great example of this shopping trick!

What i found on friday shocked me greatly, i only went to one store so I do not know of this happened at multiple locations. There were several items marked “clearance” that i believe the store manager was trying to get out of the store beforw the liquidators show up. These were items that they had many in stock and where greatly reduced. An example was guitar hero aerosmith version, $40 with guitar!!! Any system, and yes a wireless guitar.

So back to my original idea. I read last night that there were lines at multiple circuit citys. The other vultures must of smelled the carcass about to keel over. Fair enough, there is enough meat for all of us, but i better go on sunday in order to find more than just bones. So I went early today to circle some more around the body. Guess what, no one was taking big ticket items, well a few dumb people where, those who hadn’t done research before hand. Some items marked 10% off had been raised as much as 20% over the regular price. Let’s not even get into what was discounted 30%!!! The best part about the store I went to, they used one of those contraptions that cuts off your cell phone signal, why you may ask, well if you have an iPhone you can’t go online! Even a plain phone couldn’t call a buddy and ask what he thought. Good luck clearing the store out with those tactics. We may all have to wait 6 weeks from now in order for the real fire sale to begin and then we can enjoy some meat. Then again, with what I saw today, employees may take care of their unemployment and liquidate the store even faster. Now let’s get to the intersting part. The liquidators were in such a rush to raise the prices that they didn’t enter the discounts on the computers. Every register had a calculator, which they would use for figuring out how much each item should be.

So the process works like this. You walk up to the register, tell the poor employee condolences, then he scans all your items, then he goes to his calculator, and the he manually overrides the price on every single items. Now, granted I haven’t audit in 7.5 years, but what are these idiot liquidators thinking. Forget the time consumption and lack of efficiency that is caused by this system, people will wait if they think they are getting a killer deal (tell me you haven’t waited forever for a register at Fry’s). The liquidators have empowered the employees who are soon to be out of a job the power to liquidate the liquidators!!! Now that was a true stroke of genius!!! 5 out 5 coyotes on that one! Allow the employees that will all soon be jobless to calculate the discount! “Hey Dude, come over to my job man, for $20 i’ll get you World Tour for 50% off, don’t give me the 20 at the store, wait till I get off. Hey what if you get two and we sell one on eBay”