An Oregon employee of Fry’s Electronics says his store offered a shady Black Friday deal that let customers skip lines if they bought a certain router. Taking the name George Orwell, he writes:

I’m an employee at Fry’s in [redacted] and we were told this year that if a customer bought a wifi install for $100 and a netgear router for $50 they would receive $100 in rebates and be able to skip the long lines. While we were instructed to sell the install service without directly advertising that customers could skip the line, we were instructed to say it in a way so that customers would pick up on the obvious. Since the line on Black Friday only lasted an hour or two no one really took the bait.

If employees were told to be coy about the offer, that’s a pretty solid indicator that Fry’s wasn’t so proud of its deal.

Would you buy a product you didn’t particularly want to skip ahead of the unruly throngs?

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.