Today I went to the grand opening of Nordstrom Rack.  (Understand the title now?)  I have never been to a grand anything, much less a store opening.  I don’t like that kind of stuff…all the people, the lines, the waiting.  It sucks and usually isn’t worth it in the end.

A friend mentioned it during drop off at school and said there was supposed to be some swag.  Hmmm, swag you say?  I can dig some swag.  The store was opening at 9:00, it was a little after 8:00, it would take me about 5 minutes to get there….yeah, I’ll go check it out and if the line is long, I just won’t go…were my thoughts.

Once we were in the car, I told Rory I wanted to go to two stores…Target and another store.  Target means something to him, Nordstrom Rack doesn’t.  I told him if he was a good boy, I would buy him a car at Target.  He agreed to be a good boy and off we went.  I pulled into the shopping center around 8:15 and said, “Fuck this!”  Yes, I said it and I wonder why my son’s favorite thing to say is son of a bitch.  But seriously, this was out of control.

Part of the line. I’m about 50 feet to the left.  And yes, that is the front of an ambulance.
Picture courtesy of Kristen Vermeer.

It’s a store.  And not only that, there are three other ones in the San Diego area.  So what did I do?  I stood in line for 45 minutes with my 3 1/2 year old and waited.  I think it was the fact that I saw an open parking spot immediately.  If I would have had to look for a spot, I wouldn’t have gone.

Rory wanted to sit on the wall. From there he spotted the spider trying to crawl up a lady’s leg. We didn’t tell her.

We got some free water that I would only let Rory take little sips of.  We were at least 20 minutes in to our wait and I’d be damned if I was going to get out of line so he could pee.  I would have had him peeing on those plants that he was sitting by above.

Rack water is the best.

They were actually handing out bottles of 5 Hour Energy, but I was a few people too deep in the line to get one.  Other businesses tried to take advantage of the crazy (mostly) women standing in line by handing out their coupons and flyers.  The Rack folks put the kibosh on that awfully quick.  They weren’t going to have some dude from T.G.I.Friday’s bugging their upscale bargain hunters.

I took a picture of the people behind me.

That was the small line at around 8:30. It went back another 100 yards about 20 minutes later.

And eavesdropped on the 3 women in front of me.  Here are a couple of my favorite quotes from the MENSA nominees.

The name, “Jasmine” became popular in the 80’s because of that movie Beauty in the Beast…no wait, it was Aladdin.  I should know that, I’m Asian!

 

Woman #1: I’m just going to run in there and start grabbing jeans.

Woman #2:  What if they don’t fit?

Woman #1:  Yeah, you’re right.  I’ll just grab shoes instead.

I actually laughed after that one and I got “a look” from woman #1, but something tells me I could have convinced her it wasn’t me that laughed if things got hairy.

I was starting to get worried that the dumb was going to rub off on Rory so we focused our attention on the DJ instead and danced a little.

DJ McRack. That wasn’t his name, but I so enjoyed putting “Rack” into any sentence I could.

We finally got into the store at about 9:15 and to my surprise, it wasn’t as hard to move around in there as I thought it would be.  I walked through the women’s stuff and nothing really caught my eye so I made my way back towards the shoes and found a pair of black boots for Kamryn and a pair of Uggs for me.  I’m telling you…if you have small feet like me, you have to go to the kid’s section!  I got a size 4 in kids for $60 and the best part is that they don’t even look like Uggs!

Next stop was the kid’s section where both Kamryn and Rory scored some new duds.  I checked the time and it was nearing 9:45 and I still had to go to Target so I figured I should navigate towards the check out line since that was sure to be a cluster fuck.  I was working my way to the end of the line when I heard one of the employees ask a woman if she was going to pay with cash or credit.  She replied, “Credit.” and the employee said, “OK, follow me!”  I took that as an open invitation and I took off after her as well.

We went back into a little area in the Men’s Shoe department where two Rackers were checking people out with iPhones.  Steve Jobs, you are the greatest man that ever lived!  I was now on deck for check out and avoided at least an hour wait.  Once it was my turn, one of the Rackers rang up all of my items, but when she tried to get my total, nothing would come up.  I told her I think that it meant I won a prize.  She didn’t get my joke, but actually did give me a prize by awarding me with an escorted walk to the front of the store where she suddenly got the total to come up and I was on my way out the door with a free tote bag to boot!

Rory modeling the track suit he picked out.

Probably the best part of this experience was walking outside with my bags in hand, the sun had broke through the clouds and it was now hot as hell.  Again, had it been sunny when I was in line, I wouldn’t have been there.

I was approached by a woman who asked me what was going on in the store and I told her it was the grand opening.  She wanted to know what kind of deals she could get and I asked her what she was looking for.  She asked me to price the outfit she had on.  Uh…Huh?  I told her her shirt would probably be $20 – that was enough for her.

There was still quite a long line to get in the store and as I walked past all the sweaty,  pending shoppers, I was asked by two different ladies if it was “worth it”?  What the hell?  Again, this isn’t the only Nordstrom Rack in San Diego.  If you have never been to one, I suggest you go visit one that isn’t overloaded with a gazillion people.  I gave a stock, ambiguous answer to both of them.  “It depends on what you are looking for.”  I’m sure they greatly appreciated my input.  I wasn’t trying to be a bitch, but it’s true.  I asked one lady what she was looking for and she said, “Huh, I don’t know.”  Well….