I adore Black Friday as a mostly innocent bystander. Never being brave or stupid enough to plow out to Kohl’s, Target, or the malls on Black Friday. I love collecting stories from friends and my sister-in-law who are insane enough to go toe-to-toe with crazy people in an effort to save money and get the Christmas shopping season off to a strong start. Craziness is never lacking. This year someone threatened to shoot people in Madison, while other people just slacked and got in fights. I encouraged my dear friend Amy McClellan to guest-post a recap of Black Friday.
Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving, is a tradition for many just like the turkey at the Thanksgiving table. For those that have never experienced Black Friday, I would encourage you to at least go once for the pure experience. If you don’t want to go to shop, go to at least people watch, because that is entertainment enough!
The night before starts with a review of the newspaper in order to review the ads scoping out
the appropriate path to take. After that, it is home to prepare for the next day’s festivities.
This year, I dropped my husband off at work at 5:00 a.m. and departed towards Indiana for my day of shopping. A day without children, a day of shopping, a day of spending money. As I drop him off at work we passed a mall with parking lots full of cars and anxious shoppers. Already I was behind on getting the good deals. My husband commented how crazy these people must be and thought we were all insane. I smiled and kept driving!
We arrived at the first location and it was amazing to see the “themes”. Mother and daughter duos with matching T-Shirts that say “Shop until you Drop”, and others representing generations of shoppers with matching shirts. It was amazing. We don’t go that far in our Black Friday festivities, but it is neat to see all the individuals that get so engrossed in the shopping.
The meca location for Black Friday is Toys-R-Us. This place is ridiculous. To check out, at 9 a.m., was a 25 minute wait. While walking through the store you could tell those that were the serious and had been up since the early hours waiting in the 30 degree weather. While doing more observations you could tell those that had a game plan. They knew where things were in store and had their ads in the back pocket looking for that one item. The part that got me was the amount of males that were out shopping! While out looking for items I ran into a lady…literally. I apologized and she said no worries. If these men would get out of my way we would all be better off. Why would you bring a male out shopping on a day like today anyways? Right then I knew I liked her. There are just some days when males should really just realize that they don’t belong somewhere. Kind of like a woman in a males locker room…might be permissible, but there is just something wrong with it. Toys-R-Us was also the first store that we got into an argument with management of the store. No Black Friday is completely without an argument or a negotiation with management. One other note, and a key to making shoppers happy, is to please have the bathrooms at shopping locations well stocked and smelling good. This bathroom at Toys-R-Us was terrible and it made for some very aggravating females! Just a side note.
After all of the Toys-R-Us activities, it was then time to eat! This is another great Black Friday phenom. Doors open at 11am at most locations. All restaurants are like opening a buffet to a beginning Weight Watchers group…there is an onslaught of hungry shoppers ready to eat, eat quickly, regroup your shopping list, and plan out the rest of the shopping day. The second half. This year we went to the Olive Garden. Immediately I knew we were in trouble and I was going to have trouble keeping my mouth shut. Everyone around us had drinks. Most had already gotten their orders taken, and some even had their salads and breadsticks. We had nothing, hadn’t even seen our server yet. Not a good start. So I flagged down a manager and explained to him that we had not been acknowledged. All we wanted was soup, salad, and an appetizer. The manager said he would take our order. Perfect. Then another gentleman came over, he said it was his first experience working Black Friday. Still no excuse, but I cut him a little slack. He took our drink order and came back with a little old, white haired lady. She moved the speed of smell and it appeared to be her first day working. We finally got our food, but when it came to the bill, she bought the wrong one too us. See, on Black Friday, we don’t like mistakes; we don’t like people to be slow. Because every minute you are waiting for something or someone, somebody else is getting that last item off the shelve that is supposed to be yours!
Quick note: on Black Friday’s, please, PLEASE drive with the flow of traffic. Slow drivers are annoying and stand a good chance of getting run over.
Our next stop was the mall where the greatest thing of the day took place. The mall was valet parking! Normally I would just fight for a parking spot, flip a few people off that take my spot before I can get to it, or cut me off getting to it, but this year I decided $6 was a good price to have my car parked and not waste half a tank of gas looking for a spot. Not only did they park your car, but half of the money they collected went to charity, and they would run your bags out to your car for free! It was amazing. And well work the fee and the tipping!
We ended up finishing our shopping trip at the Cheesecake Factory for some delicious cheesecake! Another rule to Black Friday, is you eat just as much as you shop!
Now the 2010 Black Friday is complete and we wait another 365 days to experience it all again. As females, we just look at it as a chance for us to all come together to better the economy.
