Spring Splash continues to have positives

Spring splash continues to be an extremely positive time for many local business owners. Despite the Common Council and many townspeople’s best efforts, it was once again a time where many students were day drinking and having a great time, while helping local businesses.

Today, the unofficial numbers I was told from a fellow Walmart worker is that we had $16,000 in alcohol sales combined over the Friday before and Saturday of the city-wide celebration. Unlike last year when Walmart literally ran out of nearly every type of alcohol they had, this year the managers were prepared for it. After checking out untold amounts of alcohol during my 9:30-2 p.m. shift, I went to the alcohol aisle out of curiosity and discovered it fully stocked as if no one had even touched it that day. In my mind, that was extremely impressive.

As I left from my 5:30-10 p.m. shift tonight, another fellow Walmart worker (who also works at the local McDonalds) told me that McDonalds topped that in sales and were nearly out of the ingredients for most of their food. Apparently, they went through the entire stock of everything that was in their freezers and coolers and won’t have a truck bringing in more food until late Tuesday. I was also told that the company brought in nearly $10,000 worth of sales just overnight as many drunk college students stopped at the restaurant for food.

As much as soon many people in town love to complain about it, just look at two of the more prominent local business sales. Knowing that so many other businesses probably saw just as large of an increase in sales for the day, there is plenty of good that the celebration brings the town. Yeah there might be lots of drunk college students potentially littering and doing other disruptive/illegal things, but it is also a college town. If the residents can’t handle that, it reflects very poorly on them.