Orangeous Dailies

The bunch of us, uni classmates, had agreed beforehand to join the Nike Human Race 2009 on 241009. There were about 8 of us. However, before we could even act, registration was full. So we aborted the plan.

A few days ago, William told us about the extended registration which Nike will be organizing outside Wisma Atria. Only 500 slots were available and registration would start at 11 a.m.

This is the first time in my entire life I have ever queued up more than 30 minutes for something.

We skipped class today, had breakfast at Wisma Atria, before joining the snaking long queue outside the Nike store @ Wisma Atria. By the time we had arrived at 10:10 a.m., there were already 267 people ahead of us. The remaining slots were snapped up very quickly. We were issued coloured stickers bearing our queue number, which we had to paste on our t-shirts. Let’s fast forward this damn story. It was almost 3:25 p.m. when we had completed the registration. 5 hours and 15 minutes worth of standing in line. When we finally reached the registration counter, we were ushered to one of the ten pathetic laptops on the table to fill in our details and complete the payment.

We were really tired from standing all day long, sweating like crazy, out in the open. Of course there were arguments amongst the registrants. One particular guy, who had were behind us from the start, kicked up a big fuss at the registration counter. He argued with the volunteers, kicked the queue pole, before dragging his girlfriend away. Apparently, this jackass assumed that he and his girlfriend could share a queue sticker. He was a local guy, which made him look even more retarded.

We were wondering to ourselves why Nike refused to adopt an online registration, and set a cap of 500 slots. It was actually a marketing strategy for their watch…

While we were queueing up, the organizers kept on announcing that if we bought the watch from them for $99, we would automatically be granted a place in the race and we need not queue up. Throughout the entire registration, they paced up and down a few times and repeated the announcements. Too bad Nike failed to understand the psychographic profiles (attitudes) of the targeted consumers. We, Singaporeans, will most likely queue through sun and rain. Maybe this strategy could have worked better somewhere else. Very few or even none took up the offer. Some left (but didn’t buy the watch) because they couldn’t wait any longer while the rest continued to stand in line.

Nike, thank you very much for the offer. You can keep your watch.

Honestly, I didn’t expect to wait this long, so I parked at Lucky Plaza, which was nearby. The total parking cost when I left at 4:40 p.m. was $18.25. I should have taken a cab instead.

On the brighter side, I met some friends (Jun Ying, his girlfriend and Leonard) who were queueing up as well. Even though they left because they had something on in the afternoon, Jun Ying gave up his queue sticker to my friend, Phonsak, who wasn’t in time to get one. It was because of him that Phonsak could join us for the race.

Overall, it was a horrible experience queueing up. No, I will never do it again unless I absolutely need to.