After our Thanksgiving festivities on Thursday, I traveled with Jena to the big box stores of Westminster to partake in the festivities of Black Friday for the first time ever. Usually on the day after Thanksgiving at 12AM, I am sound asleep. However, this time, I thought I would give it a shot to see what all the fuss was about. When I think of Black Friday, I think of human stampedes and random acts of violence just because Wal-Mart decided to put 6 HDTVs on sale and everyone just had to be the first one to get it. So when we got ready to go out, I was a bit apprehensive, but at the same time curious. I had no expectations about things that I was going to buy, and did not plan on spending a single dime unless something really caught my eye.
The night started at 11:50PM as we went to our first destination, Target, which opened at 12:01 exactly. However, we just kept on driving. Why, do you ask? The line to get into the store wrapped all the way around the back...literally. We did not see the end of it. I have to say, however, that I was very impressed at the way the line was handled. There were barricades up around the entire store, and from what we could tell, they only let in a few people at a time. This is excellent crowd management if you ask me. It keeps the mob mentality to a minimum and it discourages the idiots at the back from bum rushing the front of the line. In fact, everywhere we went, we did not see any mob scenes or anything close to a human stampede.
After we left Target the first time, we went to Wal-Mart where just about the entire store was on sale. Wal-Mart actually stayed open on Thanksgiving (I kind of feel sorry that those employees did not get to spend the holiday with their families...isn't that what Thanksgiving is all about?). At 10PM, certain items went on sale, and at 12AM, the rest of the store went on sale. This prevented the lines from forming at all, and thus no mob scenes. This did not mean that we did not see any odd things once we got inside. The obvious big ticket items were the HDTVs. Just about every cart we saw when we came in had an HDTV in it. We figured that if we were going for a TV, by the time we arrived, we were not going to get one. That wasn't all, however...far from it...DVDs for a dollar, DVD players for 50, and vacuum cleaners. Yes, that's right...vacuum cleaners. We saw once customer with at least 2 TVs and 3 Bissel vacuum cleaners in his cart. Look, I know the items are on sale, but do you honestly need that many? I can only hope that they were going to be gifts.
After Wal-Mart, we went back to Target because Jena wanted to see if there was a laptop computer available that she had seen in one of the circular ads that week. As we got to the electronics department, we did not see them so Jena asked an associate if there were any left. His response was almost comical. "There were 3 left when the line was back to here...and now the line is back to here (points to area where the line doesn't seem to end)." Translation, there probably are not any left. So we left Target a second time without buying anything. Then we went to Kohl's. Jena picked up a few items there while her sisters and Mom slept in the car. We stood in line for the cashier.
We stood in line for an hour and a half!
So what did we do? We played Words with Friends.
After it was all done, we got back to the house just before 5...just in time for Sears to open! No, we didn't go back out.
Check out Dustin's Black Friday report for the StarDem right here
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