Posted on 11/29/2015 5:37:49 AM PST by Kaslin
I love me some Black Friday. Always have. There's something about a deal I can't resist. Add to it the energy around the anticipation of the doors opening, and it's the Kentucky Derby for people. But what started as a good way to save money on some things you wanted has turned into "The Purge."
My love of Black Friday goes back to my early days in Washington. I worked in the bookstore at the Heritage Foundation. It was an entry-level job answering phone calls of donors who wanted books and papers Heritage had published. It was a "would you like fries with that?" job where I had to wear a suit.
The bookstore was on the 4th floor, so there wasn't any foot traffic, only phone calls. And the pay was, well, what you'd expect for an entry-level job, certainly not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. As I told them in the interview, I only wanted a foot in the door I'd wrestle the rest of my body through on my own.
After volunteering to help policy analysts do research on education and Latin American policy in my free time, I did get out of the bookstore and into health policy. My satisfaction skyrocketed. My pay, alas, did not.
So bargain hunting was a priority.
When I graduated and got a job in D.C., I had no money, and D.C. is not only recession-proof, it's Manhattan-esque when it comes to rental prices. I could have rented a one-bedroom apartment for the low, low price of 75 percent of my pay or lived with roommates I met through a classified ad. Liking the stuff I'd accumulated to that point and having cats I wouldn't trust with strangers, I opted to live in Baltimore for a quarter the price and take the train to work.
After a year, I was able to afford cable, but my 27-inch tube TV wasn't cutting it. Flat screen TVs had been out for a few years, but they cost more than my rent. Still, I'd been watching the prices for at least a year, biding my time. Then, on Thanksgiving, while perusing the sales papers I noticed a "door busters" at Best Buy for a 32-inch flat screen Westinghouse TV for either $299 or $399, I can't remember exactly. All I knew was I wanted it.
HDTV was new, and it was awesome.
Seeing how clear TV could be was like eating filet mignon for the first time after only having eaten Salisbury steak before. It was a whole new world, and it was delicious.
I'd resolved to stay up all night, go down to Baltimore's Inner Harbor (at the time there was a Best Buy there) and complete the quest.
I jumped in a cab at 4 a.m., got down there and saw a huge line waiting for the doors to open an hour later. I gave up, told the cab driver to drive me the mile back home and fell asleep.
I woke up at 10 a.m. to the mocking blue glow of the tube TV I'd wanted to replace only to find Staples, of all places, was offering a no-brand 32-inch flat screen for the same price. There was a store downtown and I figured no one would go to an office supply store to buy a TV, so I had a chance.
Both ads said there were at least 10 per store, and though I was convinced the few hundred people at Best Buy had snatched up my dream, the place with reams of paper surely wouldn't let me down.
I got there and they had three in stock. I stared at it because spending that much money made me nervous. I kept thinking, "What if is sucks? What if it breaks?" I wasn't convinced an office supply store would be the best place to deal with when it comes to anything other than a printer breaking.
I smoked at the time, so I stepped outside think about this for a moment.
While smoking that cigarette I saw the yellow Best Buy sign a block away. I had to know.
So I walked down there and asked a blue-shirted associate if they, by chance, had any door-buster Westinghouses still in stock.
They did. Two, in fact.
The big line had not formed for my TV; it was there for a deal on desktop computers. All I knew was I had a new TV, was floating on air and was enjoying a crystal clear TV picture with my cats.
Yes, it's as pathetic as is sounds, but at the time it was awesome.
No one was trampled; no one was shot.
Now, every Black Friday we're inundated with stories of people being trampled to save $100 on a video game system. I'm all for saving money, but I draw the line at putting my size 15 Converse All-Stars on the face of a grandmother to do it.
The National Guard is deployed to patrol Walmarts and Targets. Police sit in parking lots of Best Buys, and people inevitably are arrested for fighting over the latest, greatest plastic thing six months away from being forgotten in the back of closet.
There's no lesson here, at least not an obvious one. I'd like to say I've become enlightened and just watched football all day on Thursday, but I didn't.
My wife, my sister and I jumped in the car after dinner and headed to Best Buy to pick up some PS4 controllers and iTunes gift cards while slam-dancing with people looking for their own version of my 32-inch Westinghouse from a decade ago.
We could have waited. We could have ordered these things online. But we would have missed the rush of being a part of it live.
It's now Friday morning, and I'm heading out again (there's a deal on cat litter and other things I could easily buy another time). I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's a thing. But it’s my thing, and clearly a lot of other people’s thing too.
I make more money now, but I still love a deal.
I was in the Brier Creek Walmart in Raleigh, NC yesterday to get some candles and remarked to the clerk who checked me out that the store was not very crowded for a Sat. She said she had worked Thanksgiving and Black Friday and that neither day was very crowded.
Was there a point to this?
All the TV (flat or not) does is subject you to the MSM and cultural rot. There was no reason to have one then and even less now with downloadable movies if you want the good stuff. The other reason for the big screen is sports, but sports is mainly men lying on the field in pain, looks bad, not bad enough for a replay, we’ll cut to a car commercial instead. Amazing deals this weekend only.
Doorbuster sales have got to go. Long Island Walmart employee trampled to death. Plenty of lesser mayhem elsewhere. It’s hooliganism, and it’s time to stop. I wouldn’t insure these places if I were the insurance companies.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/black-friday-shoppingwith-thinner-crowds-1448639398
Black Friday Shopping—With Thinner Crowds
American consumers are spending more online and making fewer visits to stores, though masses still circulate through stores
By Suzanne Kapner
Updated Nov. 28, 2015 12:01 a.m. ET
U.S. retailers pushed customers to seek holiday bargains even earlier this year, offering discounts online and in stores well before the traditional Black Friday shopping day.
As a result, throngs on Friday at malls and shopping districts from Charlotte, N.C., to Los Angeles were noticeably thinner than in previous years.
Several major retailers had already opened their doors on Thanksgiving Day, and many have been promoting Black Friday-style specials online for a week or more.
snip
I couldn’t care less about “Black Friday “ or articles about it.
One does not have to be wired to the MSM to enjoy a TV. Apparently you missed the part about having players that allow a viewer to watch programming of one's own choice, such as classic films, opera and concerts. If you are downloading movies, what are you watching them on, a tablet? That's not a good way to enjoy Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia or Patton.
Given all the choices I have, I choose to not watch anything. I agree there are good classic movies to watch. For concerts I prefer to listen without the distraction of the camera movement.
Start checking the deals available online now and see them get even better the few days leading up to Christmas. The online sites will start throwing additional coupons at you.
I wanted a larger TV for our boat. We currently have a 19 in and I wanted to upgrade to a 32 in and put the 19 in the master berth. I bought one online at Walmart Thursday afternoon after all my dinner guests had left. Free shipping right to my door.
That’s why people are not walking in the doors.
“There was no reason to have one then and even less now with downloadable movies if you want the good stuff.”
Kinda hard to watch downloadable movies without one.
The Walmart clerk said many shoppers told her they were only there to pick up the inshore items, they had mostly shopped online.
Yeah.
He went through all of that for a *Westinghouse* TV.
Bleah.
Swiping that.
:)
http://www.wsj.com/articles/online-shopping-tops-stores-on-black-friday-weekend-1448832594
Online Shopping Tops Stores on Black Friday Weekend
Online shopping, especially via mobile phones, surges, showing how buying habits have changed
By Sarah Nassauer
Updated Nov. 29, 2015 4:41 p.m. ET
A National Retail Federation survey on Sunday found that more people shopped online than in stores during the Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend, a sign of how quickly and deeply American shopping habits have changed.
Consumers spent an estimated $4.45 billion online Thursday and Friday, with Black Friday rising 14% from a year ago, according to Adobe Systems Inc., which tracks purchases across 4,500 U.S. sites. It estimated that more than half of Black Friday shopping came from mobile devices. At Wal-Mart Stores Inc. about half of online orders since Thanksgiving have been placed on mobile devices, almost double the amount last year, says company spokesman Dan Toporek.
Americans spent an estimated $12.1 billion over Thanksgiving and Black Friday at traditional stores, a decline from last year, according to ShopperTrak, which uses in-store cameras to measure shopping.
Big chains are trying to adjust. For the first time, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. put all its door busters online hours before they were in stores, and Target Corp. had employees shipping online orders from stores before they opened on Thanksgiving.
On Sunday, the retail federation estimated roughly 103 million people shopped online over the Thanksgiving weekend and nearly 102 million shopped in stores, based on its survey of 4,200 shoppers.
On Thanksgiving and Black Friday, online traffic to retail websites from desktop computers rose about 10%, according to preliminary numbers from comScore Inc., a web analytics company.
According to data from International Business Machines Corp. , mobile phones accounted for about 57% of all online traffic, up 15% from the same period last year, and the first time mobile traffic has exceeded desktop traffic on Black Friday.
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