=
=
=
=
Never again.
Now, I hate people, that's nothing new or revelatory, but after waiting in line to pick up a Nintendo Wii on launch day I have an all-new appreciation for what animals people really are, and how I hate just about every last one of them.
I've been excited for the system ever since it was still codenamed "Revolution" and was discussed, albeit in a nebulous form, on Planet Gamecube (now Nintendo World Report). Once the system was shown off at this year's E3 I came to the conclusion that not only did I have to have one (a foregone conclusion really. It's Nintendo, it's neat, I need say no more), but I wanted one on launch day. I well remember the weeks of anxious waiting before I got my Gamecube (even knowing it was safe in a nearby closet), of scouring stores for the elusive DS (props go to my buddy Blaine who worked at the toy store next to my store, since he came over and told me they had just gotten a shipment of the handhelds in). I wanted none of it. I wanted to get it and not have to worry about it. To that end I convinced my parents to make the Wii an early Christmas present this year. They agreed, but with a slight twist.
I owe them quite a bit of money, since they fronted me the money for a down payment on my car. So, rather than them buying it, I would go get it, and consider that money absolved from my debt. Fine by me, but it's this situation that lead me to wait in line and experience the dregs of humanity firsthand.
The closer I got to the Wii launch, the more excited and distracted I got, entirely too much like Cartman for it to be comfortable. I couldn't help it. The night before the Wii launches (this would be Saturday, when it came out on Sunday morning), I drive straight from work to Northridge at midnight to see how bad the lines are, because I know I simply could not rest not knowing what the lines were like, and if they were too long I would give up entirely.
The lines weren't bad. Well. Sort of. This was a complex with three stores selling the Wii: Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Toys 'R' Us. The first two were each at least 75 people long, and assuming each store was getting around 50 Wiis (maybe 100 for those bigger stores, but how many were going to people who pre-ordered?), I would be screwed. I never planned on those stores, though; I figured everyone else would go to those two, but relatively few would try Toys 'R' Us, and this was in fact the case. There were about fifteen people in line at 12:30 AM Sunday morning.
Here, I took a logical leap. It's one in the morning. The doors open at ten, maybe nine if the management decided to open the doors a little early. How many people are really going to show up between now and 6 AM? Five? No, most people would show up probably 24 hours in advance, then at or around midnight, and the rest probably at 6 AM, four hours before the doors opened. Wiis, compared to the PS3, would be in pretty wide abundance. There would be no one waiting three days to secure one. A number of people would probably show up at 9 expecting to pick one up handily. I reasoned the earliest I would need to be there would be 5 o'clock; simply take the time you think most people are going to show up and arrive one hour earlier.
So I fought every urge to start camping immediately and went home. I watched some TV while eating some ramen. I got some sleep. Tried to, anyway. I got to bed around 1:15, but didn't actually fall asleep, near as I can figure, until 2. I woke up, on my own, at 4:30, but made myself stay in bed until 4:50. I grabbed a coat, shoved my DS, PSP, iPod and a box of Pocky* into its pockets, and drove back to Northridge for the second time in five hours. Normally, when I drive there for school (yay Matadors!), it takes me about 35 minutes. At 5 in the morning I got there in 15.
Near as I can figure, not a single person was added to the line by the time I got there, so I was half-vindicated. The other half came when, twenty minutes later, and then in a steady stream after that, more people joined the line. Out of the non-campers (read: psychos) I was the first in line. (Sort of.)
Directly in front of me was a group of guys about my age. I made eye-contact and nodded "Hello" with one of them as I approached but never actually spoke to them. Nevertheless, for the next seven hours they became my best friends. They had the whole shebang, chairs, sleeping bags, DSes, laptop with tunes, food, etc. They were also handy for surreptitious information-gathering; they were a lot more social than I, and made a point to talk to several of the Mother Bees that flitted up and down the line spreading information like pollen.
Behind me was a Hispanic father and son group, and vaguely after them were some Asian family and an annoying Blonde Kid who was about 12 years old and his hen-pecked mother. Beyond them I didn't get a particularly good look, mostly because they literally went around the corner of the building at that point.
Nothing happens for two hours, except for me playing copious amounts of Killzone: Liberation (hey, Guerilla Games! Take a hint from the scores and don't bother making future Killzone games FPSes, make them top-down tactical shooters), and Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. ...Doesn't that last one make it sound like a gay love-story about two Italian guys who are apart for years but never lose their love for one another?
Anyway.
Sometime around 7 o'clock someone got the bright idea to pass a notebook down the line for everyone who was going to buy a Wii to jot down their name to guard against the line cutters that had been a seemingly integral part of the PS3 launch. This is the first of many eerie similarities this whole escapade made to Lost.
Nothing happened for another hour.
During this time, though, I get to hear what annoying Blonde Kid thinks about the new Zelda (incredibly little, which raises the question, if these people knew so little about the system -- and Blonde Kid was by no means the only one who didn't seem to know the first thing about the Wii -- why the fuck were they there on launch day?). I also realized that one could reduce the population of the line to two camps: Hardcore Gamers and Spoiled Brats. And the Spoiled Brats weren't even older teenagers, but about 10 years old, median. OK, awesome, your parents are buying you a Wii...but seriously, what parent does that? I've had my parents scour stores for X toy, but who hasn't? But to wake up early and wait in line for half of forever on an incredibly hot November day? That reeks of creepy.
But, yeah. It was hotter than balls. November 19, 2006 in Northridge, California was fucking hot. By 9 AM it was at least 85F. I brought a wool coat, thinking it would be chilly like it had been lately, which actually brought about a tragedy, as shall be revealed soon.
8:00: Toys 'R' Us representative (store manager?) comes out. Urges us to stay in line, he's not sure how many Wiis they have, after all the preorders are accounted for. Annoyance #3,702: seriously? I work retail. My "area" in the store is games. I make sure the game section is 100% straightened and stocked. Ask me about a game and I can tell you with 99% accuracy whether we have it for rental or for sale, new or used -- I have been through the section and its inventory so many times I could probably write you a list right now and be pretty accurate. You can bet your life I would have counted each Wii (by hand for such an important thing), and already separated out the ones which are for pre-orders, then made a sheet handy saying exactly how many I had of what. But apparently they hadn't. So stay in line, he says, and he'll be back soon with more information.
We wait. Fifteen minutes later he's back. They have 45 Wiis left, all of which will be sold in bundles (*giant collective groan*) which include the console, three games, and a warranty. He holds up the List: "I was given this when I got here this morning, and I'm going to honor it. It's the only fair way." (*giant collective applause*) Since it was found out who he was he had been swamped by people, most of whom had only recently arrived. As he moved down the line, handing out tickets to people he's surrounded by this cloud, all trying to magically get on the list.
One guy who I don't recognize is just in front of the College Boys. Before the Rep. can ask him his name (to be fair, he wasn't an idiot. He said the first name and you had to say your last to get the ticket), he says, "Serj." Rep. looks for a second then says, "I'm sorry sir, but you're not on the list, and about six people now have told me that you cut in line."
People actually clap as the guy gets out of line. (Keep an eye on him, though, 'cause he ain't gone.)
I get my ticket and put it in my wallet, then spend the next two hours worried someone's going to pick my pocket to get my ticket, but a great deal of the anxiety is gone. With that ticket, I am guaranteed a Wii; the rest is waiting. So it turns out it was a little overkill, my getting there at 5 in the morning, but I'll take being #28 out of 45, rather than #42, even if it is the meaning of life.
All the tickets are passed out, and naturally a number of people are turned away. Rep. says he'll try to open the doors a little early so we can all go home, but to stay in line, stay in order, and he'll let us know when he's ready.
8:30. Line Creep. Not a euphemism for a person, but for a tactic. I first noticed it at the beginning of the school year when, desperate for a parking space so I wouldn't miss class so I wouldn't get dropped from it, I did something stupid. I parked at a Chili's near school, even though it clearly had "Restaurant Parking Only -- Tow Zone" signs. I got towed. Picking up my car took forever, since one guy took one person at a time into the lot to find their car. I was there first of this particular group, but numbers quickly swelled. And people tried to edge around me to get to the door first. One guy even stood with his gut literally touching my back until I took a big step back as if I were stretching to brush him off.
Now the Hispanic kid in back of me keeps drawing parallel with me when I sit on the sidewalk. Every five minutes I have to get up and shuffle forward as the line, and the kid, creep up. One of the College Guys has his sleeping bag spread out which I use as a line bookmark -- as long as I'm the first person after that sleeping bag, I'm fine. It's on one of these scooches that the aforementioned tragedy occurs: my PSP falls out of my pocket onto the sidewalk and breaks. I didn't realize it at the time but later as I waited in line in the store to by the damn Wii and wanted to kill time with Killzone only to find out that half the screen is black. This is my second PSP in as many years, and I think my last ever, unless I can get it fixed on the cheap. I have dropped pretty much every piece of portable hardware that I have ever owned, and none of them broke as easily as the PSP did twice. My iPod, my DS, everything has dings from accidental drops from the same height. The PSP drops one foot and fucking breaks. Fuck you Sony. I was really digging Killzone, too. It figures someone finally puts out a game worth playing other than Lumines or Infected, and the fucking machine breaks.
Serj is still off to the side, and he and his coterie of presumed family members offer people in line $50 for their tickets. There are no takers.
9:30. Rep. comes out to tell us that he's going to start taking people into the store five people at a time. Those first five are the first five in line, so all is well. But somehow Serj has apparently gotten his hands on a ticket, because he just blatantly shoves himself into the front of the line in the small morass that had formed when the door opened. Serj single-handedly destroyed order, though he does get help when the Rep. comes out and, rather than reading the names off the List, takes the first five at the door. All hell basically breaks loose now as people see Serj (although no one called him on his shit, even though we all saw it and knew it) and several other cutters and figure "Well, shit, no one's going to play nice any more, so neither am I." Annoying Blonde Kid and his mother get in front of me somehow, as well as a number of people who'd loudly been proclaiming not fifteen minutes before that everyone should stay in line and not cut. As soon as they got theirs they were noticeably silent on the issue of fairness.
What the fuck took people so long? No other customers in the store, and presumably everything in stacks behind the counter, and it takes fifteen minutes to ring five people up. People take the opportunity to try to pry open the doors early and bang on the door like something out of George A. Romero's nightmares.
10:00. The doors open officially. People roughly stay in line, but this one Indian lady behind me keeps trying to creep in front of me in the rush. What's so maddening about the creep is that she was pretending she didn't know what she was doing, never looking at me or rushing, just pulling even with me and expecting me to let her "zipper" in. At one point I finally shoved my shoulder in front of her to block her. Of course, Serj is at the very front of this new line inside the store. I can't contain myself anymore and loudly go "What the fuck is this? Why the fuck is he at the front?" but no one notices. It is at about this point that I text Jamie, since the lesson the universe wants me to learn here is, apparently, don't show up early for first-come, first-serve items and wait politely in line for your turn. Show up an hour before show time and push in front of those who've been waiting for five hours.
So this new line is weird. It's in the very front of the store along the wall. I assume they'll take people over to the game section in small groups. It's kinda like Disneyland -- by making the line so long and labyrinthine you can make a 15 minute wait seem to go really quickly, since the people in the queue are always moving. They're not. People are being taken, one at a time, to the returns counter just at the head of the line. And they're doing returns too, so if someone comes to take something back, Wii people have to wait. Why they do this, no one knows. So I sit in line and text Jamie my frustration. I don't like crowds, I don't like people, and I don't like having to compete, especially when, by any measure of fairness, I should have to compete with anyone. I did my part and played nice, why couldn't they?
I'm roughly where I was, so it's not terrible. Some of the people behind me are now in front of me, and vice versa. The College Guys are directly ahead of me, so that's good. At least that little bit hadn't changed.
Jamie calls and says she'll join me in line, and bring me some much needed water. I had Pocky about two hours ago, and the hot and melty chocolate didn't really ease my thirst.
Ken calls, and it's fun to bitch. Then Jamie's there and brings water and the rest of the waiting is much easier, partially because she takes the heavy wool coat I was carrying and puts it in the car (did I mention it was like 95F?). A Rep. calls out to people in the line that if you don't have a ticket you won't be getting a Wii. A bunch of people get out of line. You fuckers really thought you could roll up after 10 and get one?
11:20. Some bitch is holding up the line because, as one of the College Guys reports (who was motioned to go forward, only to be turned back because she wasn't done yet), her box was crinkled. Jamie advocates taking some of the wrapping paper handy and physically assaulting the woman, and is met with murmurs of assent.
11:45. I finally get up to the counter and plunk my ticket down. Rep. says, "We're out of a lot of the bundle games, so you can pick any three games and/or controller combinations." Perhaps being further back in line was actually a coup: I wound up with two games I really wanted and didn't even realize were out yet (Rayman and Rampage), plus the one game I had planned on buying (Zelda), had suddenly become a bundle game. I grabbed an extra Wiimote (sadly, they'd run out of nunchucks. How, though? Why did Nintendo not ship an equal amount?), paid, and went to get coloring books.
No, really. Jamie and I grabbed a box of crayons and some coloring books. Coloring is hella fun, and easy to do while watching TV.
The Wii is awesome; for once something was exactly like I thought it was, if not better. A lot of the anxiety I've been feeling -- even having dreams about running to the line in order to get one -- is gone. I can fucking relax, and Wii Sports Bowling is the best representation of bowling in video games ever, and it's basically a tech demo. Zelda works wonderfully with the Wii controls, and it's a slick, sexy little machine.
But I will never do that again. It was a fiasco, thanks to incompetent handling by retailers, and pricks who will trample over anyone in order to get what they want.
Also, a message to Serj: burn in hell. You're a horrible human being. Seriously, man. Choke on a dick.
*The linked article contains entirely too much information about candy, even if it is delicious. I mean, seriously, a list of Japanese snack food?
=
=
=
=
