Black Friday Blog

So as many as you know, today is that holiday where we show everyone what really matters to us.  That is, we wait in lines for hours to buy crap that’s $100 off.  Also known as Black Friday.  As such, this is my Black Friday Blog.  No, it isn’t really that long, and yes, I did choose that title for the sheer alliteration.  When you’re a mediocre writer you have to use whatever tricks you have in the bag.

Let me tell you about my family’s Black Friday tradition:  Each year my brother Ethan and I would look in the newspaper (and in later years, online) for good deals at stores near us.  The allure of laptops normally $1,299 that would be sold on Friday for a mere $1,199 would be tempting.  Then we would stay home the next day and not go shopping.  Festive, huh?

Last night, Kyle decided that he would have to introduce me to the Black Friday tradition.  There was a desktop he wanted to buy that was 20% off and since I’d never been before, he insisted we go.  Because I’m always open to (most) new experiences, I thought what the heck.

(Some quick background for those of you wondering why we were going shopping Thursday night A.K.A. Thanksgiving night and not today:  Many of the stores this year started their sales early, and since we had gone on the Thanksgiving Grand tour—up to Columbus, OH for dinner with my parents on the 23^rd and then down to Inez, KY for dinner with his parents that day—we were back in Lexington with nothing else to do.)

We left his apartment at about 9:00 P.M. and headed over towards a few random stores near the mall just to check out what was happening.  A lot of them didn’t start their sales until midnight, so eventually we just headed over towards Wal-Mart.

More background:  I’m cheap (and a student), so I do most of my shopping at Wal-Mart.  I am used to spending 5 minutes finding a parking space that doesn’t have an overturned cart occupying it.  I am also used to walking through picked-over aisles of food that probably isn’t very healthy and spending 20 minutes in line checking out in one of the two open registers out of the thirty they have.  So basically I am used to frustrating experiences at Wal-Mart, and I expected this to be probably twice as bad.

I was wrong.  The parking lot, which probably has a capacity of over 400 spaces, was literally full.  There were metal gates set up and a few police cruisers parked outside the front, almost as if they were expecting some sort of riot to break out (#OccupyWalmart).  After driving through endless rows of cars at about 2 miles an hour, Kyle finally spotted a guy getting in his pickup truck in preparation to pull out.  He took the opportunity.  I’m pretty sure we went the wrong way on a one-way area and pissed off a lot of people to get it, but eventually the car was parked.  Time elapsed:  18 minutes.

He and I made our way up to the actual building.  The normally confusing entrance and exit sides were clearly marked and separated—by another one of those metal gates.  An annoyed looking police officer stood by the doors, playing with either a not-so-new cell phone or a taser.  Either wouldn’t have surprised me.

Once inside, it was apparent that we weren’t going anywhere in a hurry.  There were so many people there that I could barely take small strides without bumping into strangers.  Even the produce section was ridiculously crowded, although I couldn’t help but notice that for the first time, it was well-stocked and mostly untouched.  I guess zucchini’s and bagged salad aren’t hot Black Friday commodities.

After a myriad of quiet “excuse me”s and “pardon me”s, we finally resorted to just pushing past people and when that didn’t work I found that faking a cough worked wonders in making obstinate people move out of my way.  Finally we were able to make our way to the back of the store where the electronics were.  Time elapsed so far:  26 minutes.

Aside from the mass of people just going wherever, there were specific lines for specific advertises specials forming.  I don’t know where the beginning of the lines started, but we were walking near their ends.  Most of the lines were signified by a balloon with the name of the product on it, presumably because no one would have ever seen a sign at actual eye level.  I asked a woman about twenty people from the front of a line for a 42” plasma TV how long she’d been waiting.  “Since five,” she replied.  I hoped she meant P.M. but I couldn’t be sure.

Finally, Kyle and I made it back to the computers.  The advertised desktop he wanted was nowhere to be seen.  We found a sales associate—who looked like she desperately needed some Motrin and a stiff drink—and asked where it was.  She had no idea what we were talking about, but referred us to another associate, who was equally uninformed.  She recommended a third associate, but the guy she was talking about was a whole 30 feet away and it probably would have taken us another five minutes just to get over there.  Time elapsed:  42 minutes.

Below is a picture I snapped in the electronics department.  It actually shows a less-crowded part of the store, namely because I felt too-self conscious to photograph a bunch of strangers in one of the more crowded sections.

“Is this worth it to you?” I finally asked Kyle.  “We’ve been here forever and we can’t even find the line for this computer.”

“I guess not,” he replied.  “Let’s just give up.”

Slowly and not all that surely, we made our way towards the front.  What normally would have been a straightforward trajectory ended up taking us on a few detours to avoid lines for other products.  Finally, the front of the store was in sight.  We were about to ooze our way into the final stretch when I suddenly noticed a guy heaving a big box on his shoulders towards the checkout lines.  It was the desktop Kyle wanted.

“Dude, where’d you find that?” I asked.  May take this moment to say that I normally preface questions to complete strangers with “Excuse me sir,” or at least, “Hey!”

“They’re in the back, near the DVD players,” he replied without even turning to look at me.  “There are only three left, so you’d better hurry.”

Without even thanking him, Kyle and I “hurried” (i.e. walked at 1 mph instead of 0.5) back towards the line for DVD players and looked around.  To our dismay, we didn’t see any.  But then he saw two boxes on the ground under a pile of random junk.  It was the desktop computer.  Apparently there wasn’t even a line for it.  I guess desktops aren’t as popular as they used to be.  Time:  1 hour, 13 minutes.

We shoveled the various items off the box and grabbed it and headed back towards the front, this time taking a slightly different route.  It was no faster.  When we finally got in sight of the checkout stations we realized that the lines for them actually started more towards the middle of the store.  I groaned.

As we pushed through people to try to find the beginnings of the lines, I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation between two women in a checkout line.

Woman 1:  “Ugh.  You know, this is ridiculous.  The fun is over.  Most of these deals aren’t even that good, and you can find the rest of it online and have it delivered to you in the comfort of your own home.”

Woman 2:  “I know how you feel; we’ve been waiting to check out for two hours.”  They still were only beginning to approach the front, so they likely had a while to go.  “But can I buy this online too?”

She was holding up some sort of “as seen on TV” product, you know, the kind where they say “Call now!  This product isn’t in stores!”  I was willing to bet that if you could buy it in a store, you could buy it online.  And if that failed, you could at least call whatever place that sold it, as stated in the commercial.

Woman 1:  “Yes, that too.  Come on.  Let’s go.”  And they did.

In fact, they left a whole cart full of crap sitting right there.  It certainly wasn’t the only derelict cart, in fact.  All night Kyle and I had been dodging carts in the middle of aisles.

I turned to Kyle, and he knew what I was thinking.  Those women had been waiting for two hours.  We hadn’t even gotten in line yet.  And now that I thought about it, that desktop was probably available for the discounted price online too.  We decided to take the women’s unintended advice and abandon ship too.  But what to do with the (heavy) computer we had in our hands?  It would take fifteen minutes just to get it back to the spot we’d retrieved it from and another fifteen to get back.

We looked at the abandoned cart.  Without even saying anything, we hoisted the computer into it and left it with the other stuff.  Before we even started to walk away, random people came by and started digging through the stuff and taking what they wanted, like starving vultures.  I laughed as we moved away, thinking, You may have it now, but now you gotta get it out of here.  Time elapsed:  1 hour, 47 minutes.

By the time we finally got back to the car, Kyle and I were so ready to leave that we almost didn’t care that someone else had since pulled in next to us so close that I could barely get my door open to get in.  We followed the traffic to get out of the parking lot, which was moving even slower than the traffic to get in had been, and finally got on the road, which was congested with all the people going to midnight sales at other stores.  Just for our own amusement, we drove by Best Buy to see how many people were lining up for their midnight sale.  The line wrapped around the entire complex of buildings it was part of.  I’m pretty sure I saw tents in the grassy areas too.

It was well past a quarter after eleven when we got back to his apartment, tired and irritable.  We let the dog our, put on a movie, fell asleep during it, and went to bed.

Total time elapsed while out shopping:  2 hours, 12 minutes

Total money spent:  $5.67 (in gas; all that stop and go traffic is terrible on mileage)

Total computers bought:  0.0

Happy Black Friday, everyone!