Black Friday Misadventures

[Talent312]

Perhaps this is just deserts...

Thursday, 10PM... DW is fast asleep (she plans to go to Penney's at ~3AM). I head out for Best Buy. Only I discover both of my headlights out -- hi-beams work, just not lo-beams. I debate going (a) just w/hi-beams, (b) staying home, (c) taking DW's car, thinking I'd be back b4 she wakes. I chose DW's car.

10:30PM... Best Buy is impossible, so I scoot over to Target and get in line in a very dark place behind the store. Store employees walk by w/store maps and free power-bars. I enter at 12AM and quickly find what I want. But checkout is a nightmare.

2AM... After an hour in line to checkout, I'm now friends with folks around me. They hold my stuff while I go to find a signal to call home. I wake up DW and tell her that I have her car ("What!"). I advise that she have her son (my stepson) take her to the Mall in his truck and we all meet her there.

3AM... Meet DW and stepson at the Mall. JC Penney opens at 3:30AM. After an hour there, stepson and I leave her there and return home in his truck.

7:30AM... DW is still not home, but sun is up, so I go to buy headlight bulbs.

 

[SueDonJ]

So, did you get a good Black Friday deal on the headlamps? :rofl: Hope you all had fun!

 

[SueDonJ]

In past years the Christmas threads on TUG have been fun - do you mind if we use your thread for this year?

I'm sitting here watching the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary concerts on Palladia (the HD channel of MTV, I think?) Don loves concert DVD's and this one is perfect - what a huge line-up of great musicians! A commercial came on to order it from Time/Life but it's on amazon.com for $31.49 at the link if you're interested. It's going in his stocking.

 

[SDKath]

WOW, I have never pulled an all nighter before for anything!

 

[SDKath]

Hmmmm, let's see, my Black Friday consisted of setting the alarm for 9am, logging in to Amazon.com, gymboree.com, EddieBauer.com and a few other sites and clicking "buy now". Done at 9:22. Rolled over to my left side and went back to sleep. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

 

[DaveNV]

I had to work, and didn't buy anything. All the websites I checked when I got home from work were long-since sold out of the good stuff. I wish I could have had the fun you had.

Dave

 

[ampaholic]

What's Black Friday?

 

[MOXJO7282]

I scored a nice mountain bike and some very nice Nike sweats from Dick's for very good prices.

 

[pjrose]

Hmmmm, let's see, my Black Friday consisted of setting the alarm for 9am, logging in to Amazon.com, gymboree.com, EddieBauer.com and a few other sites and clicking "buy now". Done at 9:22. Rolled over to my left side and went back to sleep. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

ha ha! Mine was similar, except I went to kohls.com at 11AM

 

[bluehende]

Report from the Front Lines

I will tell you I am not a hard core shopper. In general I don't like to shop and have never been to a BF opening. And furthermore would never wait in line for 12 hrs to save money. I will say the midnight opening was the deciding factor. I will not get up at 3 AM but do not have an aversion to going to bed then.

Having said that we decided to hit Kohls Thursday night. As we were driving home from our great family Thanksgiving ( a heartfelt thanks and sorry you had to go through this, to all the retail workers out there) we went by Best Buy. There were 500 people in line 3 hrs before it opened. YIKES Toys r us and walmart were just as bad. As we went by another Kohls there was no one in line. We congratulated ourselves on picking the correct store to go to. They don't usually have those minimum 10 type stuff that means camping out to get one, so we were not too surprised.

After a nice late night snack we head down to our local Kohls right at the bewitching hour ....I mean opening time. Wow. The line was about 500 people long to get in with another 100 or 2 waiting for the line to proceed in before them. Kohl's had employees ever vigilant to those dreaded line jumpers. We took probably 5 minutes to get through the door. We grabbed the few must haves and walked to the empty checkouts and paid for our items. We took them to the car and ventured back in. At this point the place was pretty nuts. I must say the most important attribute to shopping at this point is to realize you are on a safari for the fabled deal. If it were easy it would be no fun. We filled our hands again. Now what to do. We were warned about leaving our stash unprotected. Hmmmm good advice. We went to the area where the courtesy desk was and asked if we could stash our goods here like a good squirrel preparing for winter. The woman behind the counter said no problem she would watch it but couldn't promise anything. I told her if she would not defend our stash til her death I'm not sure I would leave it here. Needless to say everytime we came back to increase the pile we would burst out laughing at each other.
At about 1:30 we thought lets go. The rest can be hunted down at a later date. First real hiccup. The line literally circled the store inside. I'm thinking "O no. Either hours in line or give up the spoils of a great hunt. We decided sleep could wait a bit and figured we would shop for a while and see what the line does. The DUH moment. 700 or more people walk into a store at the same time.....of course they would want to check out AT THE SAME TIME. About a half hour later the line is dwindling. Well even to a non shopper, shopping is better than waiting in line. Kudo's to Kohl's. They had every register open and that totals in the neighborhood of 30. As we shopped more and more the line kept slowly decreasing. Finally at 3:30......yes 3:30.......we have had it and the lines are pretty short now as the store is relatively empty. We now loaded up our stash on the new found shopping cart and loaded both of us down. The next problem arose as we still had stash left. A nice employee (again laughing at me.....a trend I'm not sure I like) helped us to now empty checkouts. As we finish our order the checkouts are now empty. The checkout area now had a feel of a championship lockerroom. Everybody congratulating everyone else. I swear I even smelled gatorade. All in all it was a fun time that I won't need to repeat for a while.

My biggest observation was that there were two types of people. Those cursing and disgusted and those that were actually enjoying the experience. I observed very few in between. And I would guess 90% were just rolling with the punhes and enjoying themselves. The bottom line is what do you expect. When you walk into a major department store with 700 of your closest friends. I would not expect a real smooth shopping experience. Kohls did a great job in my opinion and most everyone laughed about the obstacles and just dealt with a few inconveniences. I have now done most of my Christmas shopping and only lost a few hours sleep while actually enjoying myself.

 

[Talent312]

bluehende: GREAT ATTITUDE.
It does help to accept that dealing with obstacles is a part of the deal.

 

[pianodinosaur]

I could not find a single store with pepper spray on sale.

 

[Talent312]

I could not find a single store with pepper spray on sale.

HA! ... Perhaps I should wear my snorkel mask next year.
I wonder if some Occupy Something protesters could use 'em.