Black Friday Shopping is Ridiculous!
WGAL Channel 8 N.B.C. of Harrisburg, Pa. had a report from Bass Pro Shops on Thanksgiving night, 11/22 . Bass Pro shops in Harrisburg had so many people camping out in their parking lot on Thursday night that they put up tents for them to warm up in. I applaud Bass Pro Shop for the forward thinking in customer care but I cannot help but wonder about the sanity of these people camping out just to save a few bucks.
Wasn't just Bass Pro Shop either. I used to be a retail manager and these people get worse every year! I honestly feel bad for those that are on limited incomes and need these sales. Usually they cannot "camp out" over night then miss out on the deals because they were not able to be first in line. I think that retailers should use the tools at their disposal to get these people a little help. I don't know how to go about it but ideas start with a single thought and there is the thought.
As for me no more Black Friday shopping. I volunteered to take Amy out as she is not recovered from her biopsy that was done on Tuesday. We only made it to three stores, one we actually never went into. They were, of course, out of the things we wanted as we were not able to wait in line due to Amy's condition so we had to wait for the lines top go down. Everyone was being rude, shoppers, sales associates and, yes, after a while, me! After being poked, run into, run over and almost run down by a clown in a minivan that would not stop for people in the cross walk, I am ashamed to say I lost my cool.
The jerk in the minivan is the one that upset the apple cart for me. He almost ran five of us over. I can take a lot but when someone endangers the lives of others like that I am going to act. I did and used a rather liberal dose of "Soldier Speak" on him. He had his window down and drove away rather quickly. I am ashamed that I lost my cool like that. I could have made a bad situation worse and to act like that in front of Amy. I looked back to see her tuck her chin, smile and say, "Honey, lets just go home. We can get everything online.". I love that woman! Oh, of course there was nary a law enforcement officer in sight.
Well enough of the rant. To those I offended out there, I apologize. Lesson learned is shop on line, shipping is now usually cheaper than gasoline anyhow. :D
Re: Black Friday Shopping is Ridiculous!
The "camping out crowd" are not necessarily financially strapped. Many of them just get in those lines to get a "deal" or to get their picture in the local paper. It's about the bragging rights of saying they got something at a bargain basement price. According to my son, all of the Black Friday "loss leaders" are available online every day if one does their due diligence and scours the right web sites.
We don't get taken in by the hype, and avoided shopping on Friday entirely. My bride went shopping today and said the stores were not crowded at all. She was done shopping in just three hours.
Contrary to popular belief, shopping is NOT the reason for the season.
Joe
Re: Black Friday Shopping is Ridiculous!
I never heard of Black Friday till your post. So I looked it up. We don't have it up here in the great white north yet....
Now that I know about it. How about this little gem.
The term Cyber Monday, a neologism invented by the National Retail Federation's Shop.org division, refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday, which unofficially marks the beginning of the Christmas online shopping season.
In recent years, Cyber Monday has become a busy day for online retailers, with some sites offering low prices and other promotions on that day. Like Black Friday, Cyber Monday is often wrongly said to be the busiest shopping day of the year for online shoppers, although in reality several days later in the holiday shopping season are busier.
Re: Black Friday Shopping is Ridiculous!
yeah, i HATE BLACK FRIDAY! :evil: i go to school across the street from what i recently heard was one of the biggest tourist attractions in northern VA. yep. the potomic mills mall. and so i went there on friday to go hangout with friends, and it was RIDICULUS!!!! there were so many people there, we could hardly walk around, so we basically just spent all our time at the arcade playing DDR. it was pretty funny, because a bunch of tourists stopped to watch us play DDR and so by the time i was done, i had a crowd of about 30 people.
but so anyways, i tried to walk around a little bit, and mall security was everywhere. i saw two people get busted for shoplifting, and i stopped to talk to one of the mall security, and within 2 minutes, he was called to go catch someone. so im probably just going to stay at home from now on on black friday
Re: Black Friday Shopping is Ridiculous!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Valencic
The "camping out crowd" are not necessarily financially strapped. Many of them just get in those lines to get a "deal" or to get their picture in the local paper. It's about the bragging rights of saying they got something at a bargain basement price. According to my son, all of the Black Friday "loss leaders" are available online every day if one does their due diligence and scours the right web sites.
We don't get taken in by the hype, and avoided shopping on Friday entirely. My bride went shopping today and said the stores were not crowded at all. She was done shopping in just three hours.
Contrary to popular belief, shopping is NOT the reason for the season.
Joe
How right you are Joe. This is our duplex last year. The landlords son lives next door and we both love to decorate:
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h2...6/IMGP0087.jpg
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h2...6/IMGP0085.jpg
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h2...6/IMGP0084.jpg
Sorry if that offends but, after all, it is a celebration of the birth of Jesus.
Re: Black Friday Shopping is Ridiculous!
Eric,
I'm sorry you had a bad experience shopping. I won't go near the Stores until AFTER Christmas (only for food)
Doug P.S. And the Joseph Tomelleri Trout Calendar (After)
Re: Black Friday Shopping is Ridiculous!
"Black Friday", always amuses the heck out of me, because Linda and I stay HOME! We live just off a major highway route, here at the beach, that leads north and south to the two big shopping outlets in our area. South, is an "Outlet Mall", which one can imagine, is wall to wall people on a Black Friday and north of us, is another straight retail shopping complex.
So, of course, being just off this main arterial, what do we hear at THREE AM Friday morning?? CAR HORNS, blaring at each other, as people are fighting for the passing lane, etc, to get to the stores that opened at FOUR AM and FIVE AM!??!
"WHY", is of course, a retail marketing strategy that makes retailers open at these weirdo hours, but the amount of people that actually GO to these early AM sales amaze me!?! I looked through the ads, for the 4 and 5 AM sales, in the local paper. Then, I went on line.......
Out of 11 items I picked, I found 10 of them that were exactly the same,as what was on sale at 4 and 5 AM locally, "item wise" and only ONE was $2.75 more expensive on line, than at one of the local stores. I added our gas prices, currently, @ $3.23 a Gal, times 4 gallons to go shopping, against the average freight cost of the 11 items I'd picked out and looked for on the Internet. With the Internet stores, almost all having "free shipping on $25.00 or more", I figured I could have purchased my 11 items, saved over $278.00 and SLEPT IN UNTIL NOON!
I talked to a buddy of mine, later that Friday. He has to go to the body shop on Monday to see about getting his driver's door replaced, where a lady in a big pickup backed into him, trying to force her way in ahead of someone else, into a parking space. One of Linda's girlfriends, went to a 4AM sale and ended up twisting her ankle, badly, "Because some man, after the last one of the specially priced DVD players, knocked me sideways, with his elbow and down I went!!"
Yeah, "HAPPY Holidays"...................right.http://smilies.vidahost.com/otn/holiday/madnoel.gif
Re: Black Friday Shopping is Ridiculous!
Quote:
Originally Posted by nighthawk
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Valencic
The "camping out crowd" are not necessarily financially strapped. Many of them just get in those lines to get a "deal" or to get their picture in the local paper. It's about the bragging rights of saying they got something at a bargain basement price. According to my son, all of the Black Friday "loss leaders" are available online every day if one does their due diligence and scours the right web sites.
We don't get taken in by the hype, and avoided shopping on Friday entirely. My bride went shopping today and said the stores were not crowded at all. She was done shopping in just three hours.
Contrary to popular belief, shopping is NOT the reason for the season.
Joe
How right you are Joe. This is our duplex last year. The landlords son lives next door and we both love to decorate:
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h2...6/IMGP0087.jpg
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h2...6/IMGP0085.jpg
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h2...6/IMGP0084.jpg
Sorry if that offends but, after all, it is a celebration of the birth of Jesus.
Eric,
That is WONDERFUL!!!
Doug :D
Re: Black Friday Shopping is Ridiculous!
Eric,
I Commend you on your Restraint, in my younger daze I had been known to put rather large "Dents" in peoples auto hoods when almost getting run down because they were too stupid to stop in pedestration crosswalks in shopping aeras, now I just use my "P.O'd" glare at them and it works just as well.
Bill
Re: Black Friday Shopping is Ridiculous!
I'v worked for wally world for over 12 yrs, I'v seen alot, lol Don't think this was mentioned, but alot of folks camp out to get the limited quanities of an item so they can take it home, put it on e-bay, and sell it for many times what they paid for it...