Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, has become a bit of a Roman circus of consumerism. Retailers competing for customers' wallets with “leaked” ads coming out weeks before the big day, crazy traffic jams, all manners of people fighting tryptophan-induced sloth to get up for bunker-buster deals and full-contact shopping.
Retailers aren't stupid, though. They don't have unlimited supplies of $10 DVD players and $100 Wiis. They limit quantities of the loss leaders so that they're gone, say, seven minutes after opening the doors. (OK, maybe it's longer than that. Eleven minutes.) Which is the very reason that it has become a bit of a tradition in itself to camp out Thanksgiving night and very early Friday morning in front of the big stores — usually in the butt cold — to be one of the first customers in the store, and one of the first to grab some of those deals that might save a couple hundred dollars.
A little crazy, and not the best use of one's time perhaps, but as long as people aren't violent, hey, it's a free country.
I don't really get, though, why arriving a few hours early for a store opening isn't enough. Why people will camp outside in front of Best Buy a full freakin' week before Black Friday.
This is ridiculous, but what's even more ridiculous is that the management of that Best Buy rewarded them with iPads. I suppose the families won the award for their firstness for the 2010 holiday shopping season — and that St. Petersburg, FL, Best Buy was a beneficiary of the publicity — but is waiting around a week for the opportunity to spend money and be the first to be trampled something that needs to be rewarded?
Many people don't even brave the stores on Black Friday or any of the other days that follow. It costs too much time. They can go on Amazon or eBay and shop from the comfort of their easy chairs. Heck, they can blow off the stores altogether and get a full 5% rebate from eBay through MrRebates.com this week. They'll have a whole lot more time to do things that are productive.
The fifteen minutes of fame was reward enough. Let's not reward those who squander their time.
I remember many years ago when Black Friday was actually fun. My mom and I would sit down on Thanksgiving and make our plan of attack. Stores opened early but not 3am early!
We would get there and it would be a friendly crowd. Stores gave away goodie bags to those willing to get up that early and shop.
We stopped going when the specials weren’t that special any more and the whole thing just stopped being fun.
I don’t really get, though, why arriving a few hours early for a store opening isn’t enough.Many people don’t even brave the stores on Black Friday or any of the other days that follow. It costs too much time.
I live in Spain, so we don’t have such event as Black Friday. I think it is interesting idea and would love to experience something like that. Although I do understand that it is too much trouble to be in the crowd and fight for the deal.
We totally blew off anything Black Friday related as well. I don’t get the point much either.