Here Comes Black Friday

One of the busiest days in retail is "Black Friday".  It's been that way for over thirty years, though thirty years ago when I was working in retail it didn't have that nickname.  I do know that the Pay Less Super Drug Store in San Jose where I was working at when I was in college would open at 7:00 AM and the crowds would come rushing in.  I was never assigned to work during the opening but I would come in the afternoon after the big rush was gone and hear one of my co-workers tell me how busy it was.

Black Friday continues to remain busy, and seems to be getting a lot of media attention these past few years whenever it comes up.  You hear stories about how people are camping outside of Best Buy the night before, joining this long line of people out there in the cold night waiting for the store to open at 5:00 AM or 7:00 AM or whenever.  In Tucson, I'm hearing that Toys R Us is opening at midnight.  When I was driving past their Broadway location on the way home from Todd's last year at 10:30 PMish there was a long line.  I thought OK, at least they're not out robbing liquor stores, but at the same time I'm failing to understand why going to a Toys R Us at midnight is such a high priority.

And from what I'm hearing, this year Target is opening up early.....I can't remember if it's 10:00 PM on Thursday or at midnight.  Headlines recently posted on the Drudge Report tell me of some employees protesting this action.  Last year I saw in the letters to the editor complaints that the major retailers are "taking people's time away from their families".  I got the sense that some of those letter writers were those who felt compelled to go shopping on Black Friday, and were upset that this was eating into their time on Thanksgiving Day since they would have to leave right after dinner to go shopping instead of enjoying a glass of wine that evening with their loved ones. 

I think there are some things that need to be pointed out here.  This is coming from someone who doesn't do Black Friday and doesn't want any part of it.

First of all, no retailer out there is holding a gun to your head to make you go out on Black Friday.  I'll grant that there might be a major deal on some laptop or flat screen TV that you can only get on that day.  But ask yourself......do you really have to have that laptop?  Do you really have to have that big screen TV taking up 50% of your living room wall?  Yes, they're nice to have, but does not having one of these items take twenty years off of your life expectancy?  I guess if you're the type of person who stews over not having the item then it might really shorten your life, but me, I can do without them if I have to.

What I'm saying here that it isn't the retailer's fault for taking you away from your family if you go out to camp in the long line right when you're done with your Thanksgiving dinner.  You have the choice to stay home that evening or to go out.  No one is "making" you go out to sleep outside of Best Buy that night.

Second......I'm going to admit that I have a problem with the "mob" mentality that a lot of the human race seems to suffer from.  I saw this in those three years that I worked for Payless.  I swore that when I got out of college with my degree, I was going to have no part of it.  I don't go out shopping when the Sunday sale breaks and I especially don't go out shopping on Black Friday.  In fact, I hate shopping.  I'm a guy.  The only time I enjoy going to the store is when I'm picking up some steaks or chicken to throw on the BBQ.  But don't ask me to do Black Friday.  I get that day off, and I just might want to stay home and listen to some Bachman-Turner Overdrive instead.

To be honest, I don't like it when the retailers exploit the herd mentality of the consumer.  A year ago, or maybe it was two years ago, a Walmart employee in New York who was opening the front door on Black Friday was trampled to death by the mad stampede of the mob.  This suggests that hundreds of people that morning valued the laptop much more so than they valued the life of a human being who was only trying to let them in.  Is Walmart responsible for that?  Or were the stampeders responsible?  I don't think anyone knew beforehand that this was going to happen, but would foreknowledge of this have made the crowd act responsibly?  Based on the three years I put in at Pay Less, I have to say that the overall consensus of those shoppers would have been "well he shouldn't have been in our way". 

And again on a Black Friday, we had a shooting in a Palm Springs retail outlet.  I can't remember which one but two shoppers were after the same item and the one who "lost" drew a gun out and used it. 

What does that say about the mentality of your average Black Friday shopper?  Are there really a lot of Black Friday shoppers who would have no qualms about shooting another shopper or trampling someone to death in order to get that last toy or that last laptop? 

Now to be fair, that shooting in Palm Springs is the only Black Friday homicide that I have ever heard of.  And as far as I know, that one Walmart employee is the only fatality of a worker who was stampeded to death.  We've had years of Black Fridays.  I'm sure that there are some fistfights going on that we won't hear about on the national news.  But when a worker is trampled to death and a shopper shoots another shopper over a toy, it doesn't make the average Black Friday shopper look good.......a stereotype becomes very easy to apply here.

I'll admit one more thing.  After I heard about that Palm Springs shooting I facetiously said to someone, "you know, what they oughtta do is this:  they should give the first 200 shoppers at the door a gun and ten rounds of ammunition, and tell them to go ahead and shoot each other so that they can be the one who "wins".  The district attorney should declare beforehand that no one will be prosecuted.  Let the shoppers take each other out, and let the retailers enjoy more carnage than they've ever had before."  And, I said pretty much the same thing when I was talking to Mark a couple of days ago about Black Friday. 

This pretty much suggests that I don't like Black Friday, and maybe deep down inside I really don't.  It reminds me of this one episode on Star Trek, The Return of the Archons.  That's the episode where Kirk and company stumble across that world run by Landru, and that there's this "festival" where everyone goes out and gets their inner rage out of their systems.  They set fires, destroy windows, attack women, and make your average San Francisco peace "protest" ("riot" is a more accurate word) look like a cakewalk.

But as far as Black Friday goes, I don't know who to think less of sometimes:  the greedy retailers, or the shoppers with that mob mentality that so often seems to rise to the surface; making you think that maybe man really is evolving into ape. 

Well, it is what it is, and one more thing for me to be thankful for this week is that I don't have to be a part of Black Friday. 

I guess the upshot here is that the retailers and the Black Friday shoppers deserve each other.

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I am taking this week and next week off of work, and catching up on a few things.  This gives me the chance to catch up on some reading.  And, some blog commentary.

Don't forget to pet a dog or a cat.