Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Black Friday beckons

With only 72 hours remaining until the annual retail spectacle known as “Black Friday”, I keep telling myself that I’m not going to get caught up in the hype again.  Every year I salivate over the outrageously low-priced electronics in the sale flyers, but last year was the first time I ever took the bait.  I stayed up all night from Thanksgiving Thursday, onward, determined to get to a major electronics retailer so I could buy a new laptop for half-price.  I arrived at the store in the wee hours of the morning, just before 5am, and was stunned to find that thousands of people had already arrived.  The store didn’t open for another ten minutes, yet people were lined up for hundreds of feet, wrapped around buildings, shivering in the cold blackness.  It was like nothing I’d ever seen before.  My odds of getting into the store at all, let alone putting my hands on one of the 200 sale laptops available, were nil.

On the way home, I stopped by another electronics giant.  This time I was able to get into the store, but the aisles were teeming with mile-high shopping carts.  People who’d been let in when the store opened had thrown everything they could reach into their cart, and large sections of store shelves were already empty.  I found one small item I needed (but which wasn’t on sale), but the wait for a checkout stand must have been close to an hour.  I left, but went next-door to an office supply store which was also open early.  They didn’t have any sale items.  The silence was deafening.

The two things I purchased last Black Friday were an Egg McMuffin and a cappuccino from Starbucks.  I came home, turned on my computer, and went to eBay.  The laptop I’d wanted to buy that morning was probably already up for sale.  I’m positive that a majority of Black Friday shoppers are now resellers, looking to make a profit, and not people just looking for bargains on gifts.  The Internet has changed a lot of things!

This year, I will not leave my house for Black Friday, and I’ll stay snuggled up in bed for as long as possible to enjoy a lazy day. I might be snuggled up with the laptop I eventually bought at full price a few months ago, however.  A few Internet retailers, like Amazon, are having Black Friday specials, and I don’t want to miss them.  Maybe I can get Starbucks to deliver a latte to me.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/20 at 04:13 AM
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