Thanksgiving was great we had a quiet meal at home; Mom did almost all the cooking all in all it was a great holiday. Dinner was so good that I took a 3 hour nap afterward. 
That nap meant I couldn’t fall asleep last night so I was carousing around the internet, catching up on MySpace, emails and all that stuff. Around 6 AM, I check my feeds and the local newspaper has a story that one of the local Wal-Mart’s parking lot is full. LINK
What makes this news? What the hell makes a parking lot being full news? Later this evening when I awoke there’s a story in that same newspaper about how a Wal-Mart worker was tampled to death by people breaking down doors to get in for sale (Note: This is not the same wal-mart mentioned above). How sad is that people are so hungry for a few dollars off 3rd world made, electronic junk that they kill someone in the process.
Personally I think black Friday is one of the biggest media perpetuated farces going. Anyone who’s ever watched TV or picked up a Sunday newspaper in America knows that retailers will use any excuse for a sale. We’ve got President’s day sales, Memorial Day Sales, Labor Day Sales, back to school sales, hey it’s sunny outside today sales well maybe not that latter but you get the point any excuse to move more products by feigning a sale. Black Friday is just another sale except that you hear about it on the news, the sale all of a sudden comes news worthy. The week of Thanksgiving no doubt the every single night the evening news will have something about Black Friday sometimes the “reports” could easily be mistaken for a commercials. “News” programs start plugging products around the beginning of November under the guise of gift guides. Wal-Mart and other retailers send cease and desist letters to webmasters who list it’s black Friday sales on their websites. No doubt knowing full well that you cannot claim copyright on prices but hey it drums up more publicity. It’s ridiculous.
Black Friday the epitomizes of the commercialization of Christmas. I’ll write on the commercialization of Christmas at another time, it sad but not the focus of this post. Retailers advertise lower than usual sale prices for black Friday yet never seem to have enough stock to keep up with the demand. As Black Friday happens every year I have a had time believing that retailers cannot source and plan for it. I wouldn’t doubt if they only stock 5 or 10 of those drastically reduced price flat screen, made-in-Korea TVs just to get you in the store to buy other stuff. If you woke up at 5AM in order to trek all the way to the mall and then they don’t have what they advertised why not get something else any way right? Why waste a trip? We already know that big chain stores have products called loss leaders. Those are popular products that they deliberately sell at a loss just to get you in the store to buy it where more than likely you’ll buy something else too; chances are at a considerable profite for the retailer. It’s the old razor sales model. Sell the razor handle cheaper then cheap then charge an arm and a leg for blades. Consumer printers do the same thing with ink.
What really irks me about black Friday is that people are so stupid. They don’t seem to see it coming. Do people not realize that there are sales all year round? Do people not realize that retailers just want to lure them into the store? Do they realize that you can sit at your computer in your underwear and find sales any day of the year? Do people really enjoy waking up at 5 AM, going out in the cold, battling crowds, and traffic just to save a few dollars? Even if you save $20 on an item is it really worth all that aggravation?
Keep in mind, this is coming from a guy who goes shopping as late as possible in the evening or sometimes in the middle of the night to avoid crowds. I love kids but cannot stand them running around and screaming like Indians in stores unchecked by their parents. I don’t like being bumping into by carts, nor do I like feeling rushed and not being able to just browse people everyone’s in a rush to go wait on a checkout line and fight their way out of the parking lot. Heck I wear my headphones when shopping so I don’t have to hear the rude people yelling into their cellphones, broken English over the loud speaker, and kids throwing temper tantrums. Chances are if I have to wait more than 5 minutes on a checkout line, I’m gonna be pissed and not very pleasant to the cashier even though admittedly it’s normally not their fault; more than 10 minutes and the cart is getting left there with everything in it while I head to the nearest exit.
Yet I participated in Black Friday once before I became so hardened to, sham sales, crowds, traffic jams, and shopping in general. I think it was 2001 or 2002. I really forget the reason but I agree to go with my friend’s mother to help her I’m not sure if I was supposed to help her pick out the electronic gifts, drive, lift furniture, or a combination of all 3. I remember getting up at 4:30AM leaving the house by 5 to get to a store with an already packed parking lot, fighting for a shopping cart. 4 hours in the store and 3 full shopping carts later but the time we got to the checkout counter I felt like I’d been through a battle. The battle of crazy mom’s vs. sales clerks. Only everything before the checkout line was the ‘calm before the storm’ every freakin’ customer in front of us (of where there had to be about 20) had questions about prices 1/2 ‘needed’ a manager to fix some perceived error. Literally after an hour and a half on line, 20 minutes to check out. We headed out to the parking lot which was utter chaos. A half hour of packing the car later we were on the road only it took 20 minutes to get out of the parking lot. People straggling all over the place, no doubt just as frustrated as me made backing out of the parking space daunting and getting out of the parking lot was just as fierce with three or four separate fender benders being tended to by the police whom I felt really sorry for was way to much for this guy.
A half hour after getting out of the parking lot we were home and unloading the car. Get this my friends mother wanted to go for another round. I think I could’ve killed her just for asking. I declined and spent the rest of the afternoon helping to wrap and hide gifts. Ever since that one black Friday I’ve swore off Black Friday and generally try and stay out the stores between now and January 2nd.
