AUBURN – It’s 5 a.m. Friday. The sky is still dark, the air cold. Most people are slumbering in their beds.

But plenty have risen early, ready to be part of the retail rush on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. For store workers – the hardier souls behind the counters and in the aisles – it means getting up even earlier.

“I was up at 3 a.m. I was here at 4:30,” says Nancy Mannett. As visual manager at J.C. Penney at the Auburn Mall, she’s in charge of how the store looks.

Wearing a Christmas vest, Mannett is stacking boxes of snow globes at the entrance to the store at 5:20 a.m. The globes will be given out to the first 2,400 shoppers. Asked if the Mickey Mouse globes are popular, she points through the glass doors to the line outside the store.

There appears to be 200 or more people. Ten minutes later, the line snakes so far down the mall that the end is no longer visible. Word is, it ended near the mall’s center. The customers do enjoy the snow globes, Mannett says.

Just then another Penney worker, Mary Chandler of Minot, comes around the corner. “Oh my God!” Chandler says, when she sees the line. This is her 19th year working on the day after Thanksgiving, but seeing so many so early “never ceases to amaze me,” she says.

Thinking globally

The magic moment finally arrives. Manager Del Conant unlocks and pushes back the huge glass doors. A cart holding cases of the free snow globes has been removed, making way for the stampede.

Mannett yells to all the sales associates, asking if they and their cash registers are ready. No time for answers. Customers are already moving through the doors.

“OK, come on in,” she says, officially signaling the opening.

Shoppers Diane Broadway of Lisbon Falls and friend Sheryl Vaughn of Peru are the first in. Mannett and Beth Leblanc hand them snow globes.

“I got up at 3:30 and was in line at 4:30,” Broadway says.

“I got up at ten minutes of 3,” Vaughn says.

Why?

“Because we wanted these,” they say in unison, showing off their globes.

The women collect a Christmas decoration early at J.C. Penney each year, then spend the day shopping, leaving their men snoozing in bed.

Within minutes after the store opens, cash registers are already busy. A few decisive shoppers make quick purchases. Christmas music plays. After getting their globes, shoppers disperse through the store, checking out “50 percent off” sales. Women easily outnumber men, by a 5-to-1 ratio.

Complete with antlers

Shoppers Nancy Whittier of Poland and Verna Coolidge of Mechanic Falls had “mapped out” their shopping strategy the night before. After-Thanksgiving shopping is a tradition for her, Coolidge says.

“She dragged me,” Whittier notes.

Despite the hour, both women wear reindeer antlers and smiles.

It’s customers like them, employees say, that make working this frantic Friday fun.

As at many other stores, Penney’s staff prepared all week to make sure the departments were stocked, organized and ready, manager Conant says. Retail workers generally put in long hours this time of year, he says. “It’s expected. In ways, it is exciting.”

While some say the day after Thanksgiving is the biggest shopping day of the year, “That’s a myth,” Conant says. It is a huge day, but it’s more like one of the top four or five.

Friday after Thanksgiving can be a tough day to work, “but it’s fun,” says Chandler, who’s wearing a sweater decorated with Christmas bears. “You get good customers on a day like today. They’re in the spirit.”

You do get some crabby ones, she adds.

“They’re just not morning people,” Mannett interjects.