I’ve never been into the whole Black Friday scene, preferring to do my shopping whenever it’s convenient or in recent years online. Yesterday, my wife talked me into to giving it a try, especially as one item on our list was a portable CD player for my stepfather.
They’re supposed to go on sale at WalMart at 5AM, so we’re up at 4AM and to the 24-hour WalMart at 4:45. Fortunately for us, it’s a 24-hour store, so no ‘frenzy’ building up anticipating the opening. What amateurs, though. We were stupid for first of all getting there so late and then for actually believing the time. After taking almost 10 minutes to find a parking spot, the portable CD players were long gone before the advertised time of 5AM.
in the process, I had four people bump into me with their shopping carts, one of which came dangerously close to doing damage to my achilles tendon. I heard shouts of “That’s my TV”, and other shouts I won’t repeat on this blog.
One dude was going out the door with 4 – yes 4 – 50″ high-def TV’s. So, what do you do with four 50″ high-def TV’s? One for every room in the house? Do you scalp a couple of them on the street corner? Hopefully, those are gifts for others; after all, it is Christmas, right?
The whole process is like feeding chum to sharks – the stores just dump palletes of stuff into an area and then the frenzied customers fight over them. I should have know to brush up on my Kung Fu before even entering the store, wear body armor, and perhaps I should have been packing heat?
Then, I hear about someone who got trampled at a WalMart and it’s easy to see how it could happen. No ‘deal’ is worth killing or injuring someone else. I have to admit to a bit of curiosity as to how the whole process works and I’ll never do it again. It’s just hyper-commercialized insanity. I’d rather spend a few more bucks for something online and enjoy the look on someone’s face when they get exactly what they wanted.
And, no one gets hurt.
The Algorithmist 