My German Wife's first and last experience at Black Friday....

I'm not a shopper and neither is my wife but she did want an mp3 player for her new business so she got up at 4:00am to hit Jantzen Beach Mall at 5:00am. This was a first at experiencing the shopping frenzy on the famous "Black Friday"

At 5:00 in the morning there was literally no parking. This is a massive parking lot and a large mall with quite a few separated big box stores on the grounds.

She headed to Toys R Us first which was of course all sold out. Circuit City had a line out the door of several hundred people. So she decided to head to Radio Shack which opened at six.

Being one of the first five in line she expected to have a good shot at getting one of the mp3 players at about half price. Once the store opened she ran to the rack and then to the clerk who replied that they had sold out. She said it couldn't have been more than 5 seconds. She infers that they didn't even have any available.

She said, "This is a joke."

The clerk just waved his hand in a "what do I do fashion" and looked away.

In Target there was a group of people jut standing by a shelf. She stopped as well wondering what everyone was waiting for. Another frantic lady stopped and said, "Oh, what did I miss. I don't want to miss anything."

They replied, "Nothing we're just lost."

Perhaps this is the moral of the story.

She ended up with nothing.

Happy Black Friday...

Yep.

I'm making my gifts of organic food this year.

Whole wheat walnut bread that makes the BEST toast in the world and the absolute very best granola you ever tasted!!

I've been thinking about doing something with cranberries too.

Moral to the story....


PS I'm glad your wife survived the trauma and now she really does know what dummkopfs we are!

But the ones who "make a holiday tradition of it" are pretty weird if you ask me! and I'm sure convinced they "just missed" something BIG!

I was tempted to go to Fry's to try for an advertised, impossibly cheap computer since mine is a few years old and getting wonky -- but having remember similar experiences a few years ago, decided I probably wouldn't get it anyway and even if I did it's not worth being part of this rather creepy, totally manufactured phenom.

I'd rather save some money and do some realistic shopping and comparison after the holiday season madness!

Small Dog Electronics? Only cuz they advertise on Thom Hartman, (I love TH!) I'm going to look for one for my 13 y/o there...they say they have refurbished & other value type products along with the new ones.

And yes, you can get a discount if you mention Thom Hartmann... Mostly IPOD stuff though...

they have used & factory refurbished IPODS -- my 13-y/o really wants one and I actually feel better about buying used, as I don't love buying made-in-China stuff....

I said "NO WAY!!"

When he kept pestering, I told him about last year (which I didn't do either) when a woman got her leg broken just for standing in the wrong spot during a frenzied free-for-all, anything-goes, mad rush for the electronics department.

If I were ignorant of the type of melee that goes on during the Black Friday sales, went to the sales, and was so injured, I'd definitely sue the store encouraging such brutal, pit-the-customers-against-each-other sales in the first place.

They know it is going to happen, especially when they deliberately keep a very small inventory of the most popular toys and gagets.

There were times in the past when demand was far higher than inventory naturally, not deliberately, such as the Cabbage Patch Dolls and the Teddy Ruxpin animated toys, but both of those were over twenty years ago.

Tickle Me Elmo was not a natural supply/demand problem. It was planned as were the X-Box 360 and the PS3 nonsense of last year when people waited in line for more than forty-eight hours before they were released for sale.

it would send a Pavlovian message of embarrassment. Some people never learn...

Turn active citizens into passive consumers.

(I'm joking, btw. I mean no foul.)

http://www.pricewatch.com/mp3_players/

They have some good prices. No sales tax usually.

She wants a docking stereo system and the mp3 would not have worked.

Who wants the flu at this time of year?

No way! You can't save enough money to pay me to be jostled and pushed around.

I have seen vans and SUVs loaded down so much, the driver can't see out of the windows. They scope out the stores, make their route plans for each store and attack. No thank you!

Sorry, couldn't resist.

:evilgrin:

We put a pretty good dent in our supply yesterday.

First thing on Black Friday morning, I took the dogs to the park for about an hour and a half. Then picked up the paper. I saw an ad for a 21" LCD computer monitor real cheap at Staples. It was just around the corner, so I figured I'd check it out. There was no crowd, and they had a ton of them.

I started looking over the ads this morning, and saw something curious. Bealls had a palm tree shaped diamond necklace, the same one I bought my wife after x-mas last year for $79, on sale for $79 for 2 days in yesterdays paper was on sale for 2 days at $120 in todays paper. :wtf:

has shot up over the last six months as hedges against a sinking dollar. Thank you, GWB!