The Jiggler

As patrons gather outside a retail store waiting for the doors to open, one customer’s patience is wearing thin.

James Fiedler stands in front of the doors to big-box retail store All-In-One in Vacaville, CA. He leans forward, hands cupped at the side of his face to shield the glare, and peers into through the glass pane.

“I can see them in there!” says Fiedler. “They could let us in if they wanted to, they're just choosing not to!”

Eyewitnesses report that a few to several minutes ago, Fiedler shook the door by its handle in an attempt to either alert the staff to his desire to enter or possibly, perhaps through some kind of magical intervention, cause the door to suddenly spring open.

The time is now 9:56am and some are starting to speculate that Fiedler may try to shake the door a second time.

“I think he should try to jiggle it again,” says All-In-One customer Deborah Mooring who has also been waiting for the store to open, “just to see, you know.”

“I don’t see the point,” butts in Candi Rovards, who literally just got here and seems content to scroll on her phone while she waits. “The store opens when it opens.”

Fiedler’s hand moves like he might reach up to jiggle the handle but instead he raises both his hands to about shoulder height in a gesture of frustration. “They might as well just let us in at this point,” he says after a huff. “It’s practically 10 o’clock now!”

“Practically 10 o’clock still isn’t 10 o’clock,” rebuts store employee Derek Ortega who is just now coming in for his shift. “The hours are posted right there for a reason, we don’t open and close based on the whims of that one guy. Now can I get past you real quick? I need to go punch in since I’m actually allowed in the building.”

James Fielder watches Ortega use his swipe card to enter the employee entrance and tries to flag him down. “Hey! Can you let us in here?” he shouts to no avail as Ortega either doesn’t hear or, more likely, is ignoring the request.

“This is so stupid. They're going to have to open soon anyway, might as well get it over with!” says Fiedler, who doesn’t realize that to the staff any additional minute not dealing with him is better than “getting it over with”. 

With still no indication that the doors will be opening any time short of the store’s actual opening time, Fiedler and the other customers wait.

“I think it’s a safety issue to have people in the store while they have their equipment out and stuff,” says Candi Rovards, “and you just know the people complaining the most about not getting in would sue the crap out of this place if they got their baby toe run over by a pallet jack or something.”

“Please, I took ballet as a child,” retorts Deborah Mooring, “and I think I can pirouette and jeté around any forklift or anything they got in there.”

“Yeah,” says Rovards, “somehow I don’t think they appreciate how that’s safer than making you wait outside.”

So now, as the minutes tick up to 10am, it’s finally time for the store to open. But James Fiedler can’t resist reaching up and giving in to primal instincts by finally giving the door a quick shake.

Which somehow doesn’t cause the door to open.

After a good 30 seconds of nothing happening, he shakes it again, still to no avail.

“What the hell!?” he exclaims and begins shaking it even harder for several seconds, even giving the bottom of the door a good couple of kicks, until a manager can no longer ignore him and walks up from the depths of the store.

“Hey, do you mind not doing that?” says the manager. “Making a lot of noise and abusing store property isn’t going to make us open any earlier.”

This is clearly news to James Fiedler.

“Well for Christ’s sake,” says Fielder, “it’s 10:01 already! Just let us in!”

“Sir, our store opens at 11,” the manager informs him. “We changed the hours months ago. I’m sorry, but you’re just going to have to wait or come back later.”

Everyone looks at the very door Fiedler had been standing right in front of this whole time and, oh yeah, it says the store opens at 11am.

As the manager heads back towards the store’s shelves, Fielder gives the door one final jiggle as if this time it might actually work, says “This is place is ridiculous!”, and then storms off. As he goes he mutters to himself that he’s never coming back to this store ever again if this is how they treat their paying customers.

Update:

James Fiedler returned to the store an hour later and complained to everyone that would listen, staff as well as other customers, that the store should’ve opened when he says it does and not the corporate-mandated operating hours. Okay, so that’s not exactly what he said but it was the jist of it.

We also spoke with store employee Derek Ortega who informed us that he indeed knew when he came in earlier that the store didn’t open for another hour but “didn’t want to spoil the surprise”.

Candi Rovards sat in her car until the store opened as she had “nothing else going on”. She shopped without incident or further comment.

Deborah Mooring apparently had several other errands to run but returned at 8:07pm that night to pick up a cake carrier she “absolutely needed” that day. She was told the store now closes at 8pm and was asked by Loss Prevention to leave after shaking the door for several minutes while insisting they could let her in “if they wanted to”.