Ocean County Mall Macy’s Left in the Dark on Black Friday

Ranking high on a list of disasters for a major department store would be a power outage on one of the most profitable shopping days of the calendar year, Black Friday. However, for Macy’s department store in the that nightmare unfortunately came true.

“We’re sitting in the dark right now,” said store employee Phyllis Broders on Friday morning. “All the other stores in the mall are open except us.”

Store Manager Mike Hardy explained that the power had first gone out at about 10:45 p.m. on Thursday evening, just prior to what would have been the store’s midnight opening for Black Friday shoppers.

“I spoke to JCP&L at about 1 a.m. They said that it could be due to a few possible reasons, and it looks like it might be a combination of all of them,” said Hardy, on a possible cause for the outage.

JCP&L explained that line and equipment issues may be the reason for the loss of power. Hardy said Friday morning that the store had been closed since the electricity went out, and almost no one was on the premises this morning.

“JCP&L didn’t want to give a timetable, but it seems that they may be working on a stopgap solution to have us open in a few hours, while they fix the rest of the problem,” said Hardy.