Allison Townsend
It’s almost that time again. Yep. “Black Friday” holiday shopping: rude people, long lines and for us college kids – spending money we don’t have.
As if people wouldn’t be in enough of a food coma from Thanksgiving the day before, waking up at 3 a.m. just doesn’t seem appealing, nor worth the overwhelming zealous crowds of other shoppers, for the deals that come with “Black Friday.”
With websites like Amazon.com and eBay, it just seems silly to go to a store in the middle of the night to join the line wrapping around the building all for a few extra discounts.
Though the day is a proverbial kick-off for the holiday shopping season, it is one that increasingly displays disgraceful, greedy behavior for consumers. Statistics of death rates were something not initially thought to be matched with a day of shopping, but every year there seems to be more and more incidents of people getting trampled to death outside of various Wal-Marts.
Apparently the 2008 and 2009 seasons were so deadly, particularly for store employees, that OSHA made new guidelines for how employees can actually avoid being trampled. One of those guidelines includes barricades or ropes for consumers – but that didn’t stop a Long Island Wal-Mart employee in 2009 who got trampled by the very door barricade the store had up.
When did Black Friday consumers become animals? Why would they need to be roped or barricaded off? A holiday gift?
The holidays are supposed to be a time of enjoying the company of others, whether you choose to play dreidel games or attend ugly Christmas sweater parties. People so frequently forget the real reasons behind the holiday season. It’s sad that the words “trampling” and “Wal-Mart” are so quickly becoming
related to the holidays more than “family” and “friends.”
Hopefully, anyone taking part in the upcoming shopping shenanigans would certainly be polite, try to stay out of harm’s way and not resort to any sort of violent measures in the process of frustration.
Black Friday sales really shouldn’t appeal that much to college students anyway. Unless you’re hunting down the hottest toy for a family member or planning on buying an expensive item – which, let’s face it, is not too probable – there’s no point in going through the exhaustion and hassles of Black Friday.
With the internet offering deals through many various websites, it seems almost impossible not to find the equally stellar sales and deals (and for most websites during the holiday season – free shipping) as one might find in the stores for that “limited time.”
Our recommendation? Stay in bed. Enjoy your sleep. And check out the online sales when they start running on “Cyber Monday.”
