College Night Event @ The Container Store

On July 29^th from 6:30pm-8:30pm, The Container Store in Raleigh, NC had a special event geared toward college students. Every non-​sale item in the store was 20% off, which you had to register in advance for. Additionally, they offered free bottled water and snacks from Whole Foods, as well as raffles for free items, including organizers and an office chair (selling for $ 150).
As you can imagine, this drew in a large crowd that strained their basket resources and made the aisles difficult to navigate. I had wait 5 minutes in order to receive a rolling shopping cart since they were all taken.
I took this unexpected opportunity to load up on things that I had already planned on buying for the upcoming semester. It took more than an hour for the crowd to die down a bit, but until the very end the store was very busy which made me take longer than I would have wanted.
For the first hour, Britney Spears et. al were blaring over the speakers, enticing a worker to block an aisle by dancing a bit. It also pumped up the workers to increase their desire to help, bordering on overly zealous. Normally when I shop here I don’t get asked to be helped upon visiting each aisle, so I was taken aback with the frequency of hearing «can I help you?»
I could easily have gotten out in under an hour on a normal day, but it took about 2 hours due to the many people. Annoyingly, many parents were just chatting with each other while blocking aisles, completely oblivious to their surroundings and were miffed as I asked to get by. Excuse me for thinking I was in a store instead of their living room!
All in all this event was run well and I was happy with my overstuffed cart.