Shopping the Day after Thanksgiving....

[candor]

I'm less offended by Black Friday shoppers -- whatever floats your boat -- than by the inexcusable media hype. Growing up, "Black Friday" got brief mentions in business news but that was about it. Now it's become a vulgar holiday unto itself. Watching a marathon of "Alaska, the Last Frontier" (awesome series, by the way) every other ad was about Black Friday sales. It's the lead story in every newpaper, TV news and website. The coverage is like consumerism porn. It's gross.

[Tilden]

I do my Black Friday shopping in places where I know it's less likely to be crowded, and I wait until like ten or eleven in the morning to go out. If something's gone before then, so be it. There's generally nothing I need so badly that I need to fight my way through thousands to get to it.

Today, for instance, I went to World Market, only because I needed to load up on two for one chocolate advent calendars, my go-to gift for the children of my co-workers, friends, as they work perfectly fine for either gender and I have kids from two to twenty who still want them every year. At two for one, they're a whole 75 cents a piece--and I really have to get them every year, because I've been doing it for so long that it's become a tradition (one child took hers to show and tell as her favorite holiday tradition). I also went to PetSmart, simply because my dog was out of treats. Then I went to the BOGO free sale run by a local charity-based jewelry shop and to a farm supply store that has wonderful toys at Christmas that are two for one on the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving, where I bought puzzles and games for the nursing home where I volunteer. Then I went home. Tomorrow I'll go to a neighborhood store that has a 50% off one item under $20 sale and buy a bag of dog food (not very Christmasy, but very necessary).

But I avoid the big box stores and the mall at all costs. Last year, I went to the Kohl's on the opposite end of town from the mall on Friday around mid-morning and it wasn't even busy. All the die-hard shoppers had been there and gone long before then. Yet, what I wanted to pick up was still there, and all I had to do was wander in, pick it up, and leave--and if it hadn't been there, it wasn't anything I was so desperate to pick up that I couldn't have gone without it.

I must say, the clerks were wonderful in all those stores I went to today--cheerful, chatty, helpful etc. All of them were young people too. When I mentioned how great his attitude was to one of them, he said, "Hey, I used to work at the mall. This is SO much better." The shoppers were nice too--we kept laughing and apologizing about getting in each other's way and providing directions to where certain items were to each other. For instance, I helped an older woman find the 60% off Christmas cards, and she pointed me in the direction of the BOGO free cocoa. Really, a pleasant experience all around, and I live in a city that's the largest place for miles in any direction and attracts Christmas shoppers by the hordes. But you can still have a decent Black Friday experience if you are willing to concede certain extreme bargains and know where to go and when to get there. However, I shop for Christmas all year round, so I feel less pressure to grab those extreme bargains anyway, and I prefer to shop where I know my dollars are going to local artists, charities I believe in etc. I don't really do a lot of gift shopping in places like Walmart anyway.

[Fanny Mare]

No crowds here at all.Friday was great.I got some great boots, 40% off. A few other things that were 50% off

[libgirl2]

Good for you! I stopped giving my business to Walmart several years ago.

WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price

Me too, though bit more recently.

[Tilden]

I stopped in a couple of places today, toward the end of the Saturday early bird specials (like around 10:30 a.m.) and the stores were dead. Not even busy for a weekday, much less a Saturday. Several clerks in different stores mentioned that because stores opened at eight or nine on Thursday night that the stores were basically dead between midnight and five a.m. They might as well not have been open for all the traffic they had.

At some point, perhaps, the retailers will figure out that if they open up earlier and earlier on Thursday night that the people who really like to do the Black Friday thing are going to be done by midnight or so, and those who aren't interested aren't going to come out in the middle of the night anyway, so they might as well let their employees go home and get some sleep.