Today: Nov 11, 2024

A Black Friday viewpoint from the other side of the cash register

VIRGINIA CALCAGNI Staff Writer

It was the day before Thanksgiving, and turkeys were getting ready to be cooked, potatoes ready to be mashed, pies waiting to be baked and people camping outside of retail stores for their Thanksgiving Day festivities.
At 9:45 a.m. on Wednesday, the first couple of people started lining up outside of the Best Buy I work for. I will never understand the appeal of sitting outside of a store for 48 hours without warmth and delicious food for a $200 television.
Black Friday has almost taken over Thanksgiving.
Families talk about it during Thanksgiving dinner, there are countless ads on television about it, and Walmart doesn’t even close for the day.
My store opened at midnight on Black Friday, and by about 1 p.m. on Thanksgiving there where at least 40-50 people standing in line.
The advertising for Black Friday has also gotten more intense, especially with the Target ads, which honestly scared me. Lifting the baskets, doing sit-ups on the ball, crying about the ad—it was just too much.
It is crazy to think of how far some of these people would go to just get a deal on something. People end up skipping dinner with their families and trampling people. In 2008 a woman miscarried doing Black Friday shopping.
The whole day is crazy, not just the opening hours that contain the doorbusters, because there are deals throughout retail stores that go on all day. It is nonstop until you are walking out the doors at the end of the night when you are finally finished cleaning up the huge mess.
I had a lady ask me at 9 p.m. that if she found something that was listed in the ad as being a doorbuster if she could get the price; 9 p.m. after a good 20 hours of the store had been open.
Every year the craziest day for retail has some sort of insane tragedy. This year a California Walmart (according to Fox News,) had 20 people with minor injuries thanks to a woman who brought pepper spray shopping with her. When she saw someone looking at or going to pick up a deal she wanted, she sprayed them in the face with pepper spray—all for a couple of items. That is totally not worth it.
Look at a newspaper the day after Black Friday and try to find an article on the front page that doesn’t talk about the craziness that ensues on that day.
People will do anything for a deal, and that is becoming more and more evident. People will throw stuff wherever they feel like it and start screaming if one of their items isn’t on sale.
There are people camping outside of parks trying to occupy different parts of the country to make things better, but people seem to prefer occupying retail stores much more so that they can get deals on televisions, gaming systems, computers, tablets, refrigerators and whatever else is available.
I had people tell me they wouldn’t want to be in my shoes, but honestly, I wouldn’t want to be in theirs.

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