Well, I thought I was going to witness one this morning at the Rockler sale. I was #2 at the store around 6am. The doors open at 7a.m. Hmmm. Nobody's interested in those K-body clamp sets? Well at 6:40, the laggards start showing up. We peek in the window and count - 7 sets available. I see what's going to happen, so I took a poll. Out of the first 8 people in line, 5 of them are there to buy a total of 7 clamp sets. We have a gentleman's agreement that those seven sets are spoken for and everyone's happy.
At 6:55, the manager walks to the front of the store with keys in hand. He cracks the door and says "no running", then swings it wide open. Wouldn't you know it? Some guy at the back of the line somehow sneaks through and grabs a clamp set. One of our gentleman looks around stunned and said "Hey what happened to my clamp set - I was one of the first one's here". We identify the sneaky guy and they proceed to argue. I jump in and support our gentleman. Mr. Sneaky than says one of the guys that got two sets should give up one. I'm one of them At this point, I'm a bit flushed and firmly state "first come, first served, I was hear an hour before you and tighten my grip on the two heavy clamp sets that are killing the buldging disks in my spine".
Was it worth it? I don't know. I think I'm kind of mad at Rockler about doing this kind of sale. They've been splashing email for two weeks now about all these great sales. I even called the store to ask about available quanitities and they said they had been unloading 3 trucks a day for a week. It makes a few people happy and a whole lot of people mad. I got up at 5am, drove 15 miles and paid $3.00 in tolls to save about $80 on the street price for some clamps. It was barely worth it. I think I'll pass next time (yeah, right).
Bob