(Obama money!)
Christmas now is just plain sick .....
Decisions, decisions.
Being at the door at 4am for a BF sale is like jumping into a lion’s den at the zoo. You deserve what you get because if you’re gonna be stupid, you better learn to be tough.
(Obama money!)
Someone should do a blue state vs red state talley of black friday trampling incidents...
I'm reminded of C.S. Lewis words about the school system in England “we create men without chests...”
Black Friday, the High Holy Day of the Idiot Nation.
People have scrimped and saved, sweating out inflation and their devalued money, and now they can get some deals they can afford. Watch the media pump it up as a sign the economy is improving. That will go along with a boost in employment preceding a sharp drop in January.
Not really. This happens every year.
Just like the "running with the bulls" it is expected and not at all surprising that people are going to get injured on Black Friday.
Thomas Jefferson
I’d bet you’d be hard pressed to find any of them willing to spend a dime on health insurance, but they’ll camp out on the sidewalk the night before in order to spend hundreds on stuff they want, but don’t really need.
“Crazed Black..” just stop there...
If I was making minimum wage I would likely be joining in with the crowd to get a fabulous deal on a big screen TV...both for the savings and the novelty of the experience (when you make minimum, you can't afford a whole lot of entertainment).
Same goes for the guy I saw camping out 7 hours early to get in for the midnight showing of Harry Potter. My first reaction was ridicule but then I thought "who am I to ridicule"? If that's the entertainment he can afford, let him enjoy himself. And I hope he had a good time.
If I was manager of one of those stores I swear I’d put all the sale crap in a trailer or something and pull it up about 10 minutes after these lunatics stampeded into the store. People out to be ashamed.
A good number of people slept in their cars to be the first shoppers at the Target Store in Bangor, ME. I guess TVs and other products were at half price. Inventory sold out quickly. All check out counters fully staffed. Extra cashiers on hand to give breaks.
Parking lot full.
Mad rush last weekend too! Bus loads of Canadians came down for holiday shopping. Hundreds car pooled as well.
IMO, it’s the store’s fault. If you let people pile up in front of a door in a mob fashion, without having lines and enforcement of those lines (I’m talking a Disney like line)...then once you open a small door, compared to the mass of humanity outside the door, this sort of thing is going to happen.
WHen this first started, it was a novelty, with the stores actually having to work to attract some shoppers that early.
Now it has become the “in” thing. 138 MILLION people are expected to shop today. Hundreds of people show up at a store that has 5 of each item, which you can print store maps showing the location. YOu have to rush in, because being first in line doesn’t mean anything, you have to actually make it to the loot.
It’s a system destined to reward boorish and uncivilized behavior. Some stores are smarter; they hand out tickets to people in line, but there are two problems — first, people just take tickets for things they don’t want, and give them to friends who show up later. And second, if you tell people in line that the tickets have run out, they will leave. And the whole point was to get people into your stores, having wasted hours, so they feel they HAVE to buy something to make their work pay off.
I’ve given up on these sales. My time is worth a lot more than the discounts. However, I find I can’t guy stuff at regular price if I know it was on sale, so these sales tend to discourage me.
And to make me feel better, I then skip going to the stores altogether, and order stuff online. It’s cheaper, and I can pretend I saved all the more time for not going to the store, to make up for the lost sale price.
Funny story. One year we went to a Target that was attached to a mall, but had it’s own separate doors. We were all lined up outside, since the mall itself wasn’t going to open until later. The line was very well-behaved, single-file down a sidewalk, because this was a few years ago. But that almost changed.
About 5 minutes before opening, a group of about 20 people were seen walking through the mall to the inside door. Turns out one of them worked in the mall, and had a key. They walked up to the interior door, and when the employee came out to unlock, they started knocking, and he started walking to their door to open it first.
Well, the first 10 or so people in line noticed and started screaming and pounding on the door. I doubt the employee could hear them, but just before unlocking the interior door, he figured out what was happening, and opened our doors first.
He still opened their door eventually, and they got in front of probably half our line, but at least there wasn’t a mob attack.
No sympathy here for these idiots.