Stores trying to cash in on the Black Friday phenomenon are starting to open earlier than ever before.
Some stores in the Philadelphia area opened up at 9:00pm Thursday night. Most stores open at 5:00am
Friday morning. I can see the stores trying to outdo the competition by opening earlier and they have a
right to earn a buck. What I can't understand is the mentality of the consumer. People waited for hours
in a cold rain just to be the first few in when the doors open. Two elderly ladies were knocked to the ground
at a Best Buy in King Of Prussia, Pa. The police had to stop the onrush of the crowd to keep these woman
from being trampled to death. Are people that eager to save a few dollars that a human life no longer matters?
How often do you hear of fights breaking out because someone butted a line to enter? When is this madness
going to end, after all, " 'Tis The Season To Be Jolly."

To me it's not worth it, I'd rather pay a little more for something rather than having to battle the crowds. Hell, I think I'd even be willing to pay full price!!  LOL!!

I worked in retail on Black Friday one year, I was also about 9 months pregnant at the time!!  Talk about a bad day.  It was horrible, people were awful, pulling on things, grabbing handfuls of stuff.  The sad thing is, some of these items that were on sale that day we actually on sale again, for an even better price.

To me it's not worth it, I'd rather pay a little more for something rather than having to battle the crowds. Hell, I think I'd even be willing to pay full price!!  LOL!!

I worked in retail on Black Friday one year, I was also about 9 months pregnant at the time!!  Talk about a bad day.  It was horrible, people were awful, pulling on things, grabbing handfuls of stuff.  The sad thing is, some of these items that were on sale that day we actually on sale again, for an even better price.


I feel the same way, I hate crowds. My shopping has been done for two weeks now but I know
some people who wait for today. Something happens to their minds on Black Friday, it becomes
an, every man for himself free-for-all.

I just came from the shopping mall, and it is indeed sheer madness out there! This will be the last time I venture out shopping on "Black Friday"!  :o

I love going to the mall on Black Friday.  I sit in the Food Court and watch the stupidity unfold.

I love going to the mall on Black Friday.  I sit in the Food Court and watch the stupidity unfold.


Why does this not surprise me!  ;D ;D

"Good Mourning, Black Friday, Will I Wake Up Dead?"

Why does this not surprise me.  ;D ;D



LOL 


Well, it's true.  I grab some food, sit by the carousel and just watch people run around and scream and grab things and argue and bitch and whine.  It's schadenfreude in its own special way.

LOL 


Well, it's true.  I grab some food, sit by the carousel and just watch people run around and scream and grab things and argue and bitch and whine.  It's schadenfreude in its own special way.


It has to be better than network television.

It has to be better than network television.



It's right inbetween Cops and Jerry Springer.

LOL 


Well, it's true.  I grab some food, sit by the carousel and just watch people run around and scream and grab things and argue and bitch and whine.  It's schadenfreude in its own special way.


Not only that, it's a way to revel in other people's pain.  ;)


I NEVER go shopping on Black Friday.  I prefer to shop on Christmas Eve instead.  ;D

LOL 


Well, it's true.  I grab some food, sit by the carousel and just watch people run around and scream and grab things and argue and bitch and whine.  It's schadenfreude in its own special way.


Local informants told me the Mall was packed "Standing Room" only.  There wasn't even a vacant chair. :P

You couldn't PAY me to go shopping on Black Friday.





Cat

In Canada, it's the same way on Boxing Day (December 26).  The crowds are fierce .. people pushing, shoving, screaming, fighting .. just to save 10-15% .. it's ridiculous.  And not to be stereotyping or anything, but it's usually large middle aged ladies who are racing to get the deals.  It's like they don't care who they knock down, or run over with their shopping cart.  Just so long as they don't have to pay full price

yeah, they have boxing day in england too. (the "boxing" referring to boxing up gifts to return them. i spent my whole life thinking, what? is it about hitting people? the boxer rebellion of 1904? why do they call it that?)

i'm usually in the UK on boxing day and not only do we stay home, we like to board up the windows as though we were in night of the living dead or something.

I will never understand why people act like as if they've never shopped before on this day. To be perfectly honest, a good shopper knows that the bargains aren't on this day, rather on the days leading up to Christmas. But having said that, I hope my sister is safe as she works in a Toys R Us in Northeast Philadelphia!!

I posted this on my blog about my shopping experience today:

http://encyclopedia.quickseek.com/images/Mall.bristol.arp.750pix.jpg

Tales from the Dark Side

So, My step-Mommie Dearest convinced me to get up at Four AM this morning to participate in the time-honored tradition of shopping on BLACK FRIDAY... I never really understood the rationale behind getting out of bed at such an Ungodly hour (especially the morning after eating enough to make a hippopotamus heave during Thanksgiving dinner) and driving to your local mall, to go shopping for trinkets at five o'clock in the morning. Not to mention fighting the never-ending traffic jam to enter the mall parking lot and fending off the ravenous consumer beasts that seem to turn rabid at the sight of 60% Off signs. It truly reminds me of that George Romero classic Dawn of the Dead, with the non-infected people trapped within the confines of a shopping mall while the blood (and brain) thirsty zombies staggered after them (like in the original movie, not the remake, where the zombies are hyped up on crank)... Our first stop this morning was the venerable JC Penney Department Store, with over one-hundred years of experience. The crowd was waiting ten-deep outside... the poor store manager who had the unfortunate duty of unlocking the door at five AM resembled a man facing the firing squad. The rush was on... not for any unbelievable bargains that were on Doorbuster display, but for... a crappy five dollar Mickey Mouse snowglobe the store was passing out free... While Supplies Last! The drones grabbed and growled, snatching the globes out of the haggard employees hands so fast, they winced each time. Then, it was a mad dash through the store, grabbing up merchandise the way a pirahna de-bones a capybara in thirty-seconds flat. To be honest, I don't really remember much about the next five hours... it all seems a blur to me now. By the time it was all said and done, we had spent enough money to pay off the debt of a small, island nation and there was no room to move in the SUV for all the packages. Ahhhh... the warm and toasty memories of a Capitalistic Christmas! Ho! Ho! Ho!

There ain't no way in hell I am getting up at four in the morning to save three cents. We went today AFTER the madness was over with (for the most part), and I STILL managed to find deals. I got "Rush Hour" for $4 and "Labyrinth" for $9. My son got three new Blue's Clue's DVDs for about $7 a piece. I also got him a pair of jeans for $4.50.

We didn't even go near the mall. Too many cars and too many stupid people in their SUVs running from one sale to another. :P

I don't think it matters whether you're the first in the door, or the twentieth, which is probably what you'd be if you got there in the morning instead of camping out.

It sounds pretty crazy....  ::)

In Canada, it's the same way on Boxing Day (December 26).  The crowds are fierce .. people pushing, shoving, screaming, fighting .. just to save 10-15% .. it's ridiculous.  And not to be stereotyping or anything, but it's usually large middle aged ladies who are racing to get the deals.  It's like they don't care who they knock down, or run over with their shopping cart.  Just so long as they don't have to pay full price

Um, you post calls to mind one of my Lorca poems.  This Boxing Day, drop two tabs of acid, go to the mall, and you shall witness:

Landscape of a Vomiting Multitude
(Coney Island at Dusk)
Federico Garcia Lorca

  The fat lady came out first,
tearing out roots and moistening drumskins.
The fat lady
who turns dying octopuses inside out.
The fat lady, the moon's antagonist,
was running through the streets and deserted buildings
and leaving tiny skulls of pigeons in the corners
and stirring up the furies of the last centuries' feasts
and summoning the demon of bread through the sky's clean-swept hills
and filtering a longing for light into subterranean tunnels.
The graveyards, yes the graveyards
and the sorrow of the kitchens buried in sand,
the dead, pheasants and apples of another era,
pushing it into our throat.

There were murmuring from the jungle of vomit
with the empty women, with hot wax children,
with fermented trees and tireless waiters
who serve platters of salt beneath harps of saliva.
There's no other way, my son, vomit! There's no other way.
It's not the vomit of hussars on the breasts of their whores,
nor the vomit of cats that inadvertently swallowed frogs,
but the dead who scratch with clay hands
on flint gates where clouds and desserts decay.

The fat lady came first
with the crowds from the ships, taverns, and parks.
Vomit was delicately shaking its drums
among a few little girls of blood
who were begging the moon for protection.
Who could imagine my sadness?
The look on my face was mine, but now isn't me,
the naked look on my face, trembling for alcohol
and launching incredible ships
through the anemones of the piers.
I protect myself with this look
that flows from waves where no dawn would go,
I, poet without arms, lost
in the vomiting multitude,
with no effusive horse to shear
the thick moss from my temples.

The fat lady went first
and the crowds kept looking for pharmacies
where the bitter tropics could be found.
Only when a flag went up and the first dogs arrived
did the entire city rush to the railings of the boardwalk.

OK, surrealist poetry from the 1920s isn't everybody's thing, but one time in my first semester of college I had a massive agorophobic anxiety attack at the mall.  It was the peak of holiday rush and I was leaning against a pillar feeling nauseous and dizzy and I was observing the aggressive shopping behavior of certain ladies of corpulent habitus as particularly horrifying. 

Shortly after, I read that poem for the first time.  I thought to myself, "Oh yeah...."
;D

Some reports of yesterday's battle zones. In one store a fist fight broke out when one shopper took
an item out of another shoppers cart. This fight almost turned into a riot and two people were arrested.
Hospitals reported numerous injuries from sprained joints to broken bones, one lady dislocated her
shoulder in the mad rush to enter the store.

On the stranger side of Black Friday: Sixteen businesses on Walnut St. in Philadelphia had their locks
superglued. The stores needed a locksmith to enter their establishments.

People wait all year for this?

On the stranger side of Black Friday: Sixteen businesses on Walnut St. in Philadelphia had their locks
superglued. The stores needed a locksmith to enter their establishments.


;D That's pretty funny. If I was the sort of person that got up at 2am, I'd love to go to Target or Best Buy or something and superglue the locks on the shutters.  ;D

I will pay double for everything before I'll go out on Black Friday.  It's like my worst nightmare.

I just came from the shopping mall, and it is indeed sheer madness out there! This will be the last time I venture out shopping on "Black Friday"!  :o
it didn't seem too bad where I went.I left a little efore 6,anticipating more traffic and taking time to pass the park near the river to see if i could see any foxes,but i didn't see too much traffic.At Anthropologie,there were too many people ,especially too many with kids with them,but other than that it diodn't seem to bad.

;D That's pretty funny. If I was the sort of person that got up at 2am, I'd love to go to Target or Best Buy or something and superglue the locks on the shutters.  ;D

We're anti-consumerist revolutionaries!  Subvert the dominant paradigm, man!
(Get a life you people!)
::)