Imagine This! A Pop-up Auction in an Office Max, With DJ, Lights, and Smoke!

It started humbly. Just me, strolling into Office Max five minutes after they opened, still shaking off the morning fog. I eyed the rows of pristine desks and spotted the perfect pair—two ordinary office tables waiting to be pushed together. I gave them a nudge, slid my briefcase onto the surface, and pulled out a single deck of cards. Nobody paid much attention. Yet.

Then it began.

I flicked on my phone, fired up the stream, and threw out a casual announcement. “We’re live, folks. From Office Max.” A few curious customers looked over, unsure if I was serious. But as the first card sold—cha-ching!—something shifted. One of the employees smirked, then nodded. The guy at the printer station peeked over, intrigued. I could feel it. The buzz had started.

By mid-morning, I had a crowd. More people stopped by, dropping off items—first small trinkets, then bigger, wilder things. Someone wheeled in a chair. Another dude plunked down a vintage typewriter. The staff was into it now, hyping the deals, tossing in supplies, and—by lunch—I had bought the crew pizza.

And then it got wild.

A DJ showed up. Don’t ask me how or why, but he did. The music started pumping. Lights flickered to life. Someone (who??) rolled in a fog machine. At this point, Office Max wasn’t just a store. It was an event.

The sales took on a life of their own. Staplers? Sold. Laptops? Gone. A desk chair autographed by the entire store staff? Bidding war. People weren’t just buying—they were performing. The energy in the room crackled with something new, something bigger than just commerce. It was a selling party.

By 3 PM, customers were dragging in bigger items from their cars. A treadmill. A full-size vending machine. An antique jukebox. No one knew where they were getting these things, but they just kept coming.

By 5 PM, the streets outside Office Max were packed. The store was supposed to close at 7, but by then, traffic had snarled outside. The local news station had a camera crew on-site. The city had to shut down the block because there were too many people watching, too many people bidding, too many people experiencing something they never knew they needed.

By 9 PM, we had rewritten the rules of commerce.

And all I had done was push two desks together.

A selling party? Nobody had ever heard of such a thing.

But by the end of the night, nobody could imagine life without it.